Opening Statement of Republican Leader Virginia Foxx, Hearing on “Eliminating Barriers to Employment: Opening Doors to Opportunity”
This hearing is supposedly about barriers to employment, not opportunities for federal spending, federal involvement, and federal power. We could use a little truth in advertising today.
It seems our colleagues on the other side have done their level best to have a hearing about employment without addressing the role of education. Or put another way, skills development. That shows two things. First, a fundamental disregard for why this committee exists to do what it does—education policy and workforce policy, in tandem, side-by-side, cause and effect. Second, it shows a tone-deafness about the current state of the American economy. We have historic job growth, historic wage growth, and an historic number of job openings. Employment opportunities abound, but the skills gap persists and grows.
Looking at individual policies outside of the role of education is not the way to approach this question of opening doors for Americans. It’s these siloed, piecemealed approaches that have gotten us here. When will we learn? The American dream was founded on the premise that individuals are free, and capable of improving their lives, of living better and climbing higher than their ancestors before them. As representatives of millions of people who still cling to these hopes, anything Congress can responsibly do to help increase opportunity for all Americans in the workforce, especially those with disadvantages, it ought to do. But history has shown us that it is not the federal government, but the innovation and initiative of individual Americans themselves, that has successfully broken down barriers.
Though in the past we seemed to agree more on what the barriers to success are and how to remedy them, today, Democrats see barriers as opportunities to increase federal power. Republicans see barriers as opportunities to enable individual empowerment.