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Senate
Passes Spending Bills, Next Up: Conference Committee and
The White House
Late Tuesday night, the Senate passed its annual
Labor-HHS- Education spending bill to fund job training,
child care, education and other critical services for
unemployed and underemployed women. The bill was approved by a 75 to 19 vote. Click
here to see how your Senator
voted. Specific funding levels and comparisons to last
year's final spending and this year's House totals are
detailed here.
The bill will now go to a joint House-Senate
conference committee where Members of Congress will work
out the differences between the House and Senate
versions-including several that affect women's economic
equity. The Senate bill includes less
funding for child care and career and technical
education than the House bill, but would not take back
$335 million in unspent WIA job training funds from
previous years. Once a compromise is reached on these
and other issues both the House and Senate will need to
approve before it goes to the President.President Bush has vowed to veto the
Labor-HHS-Education bill if it exceeds his budget
request for the year. The
House-passed bill exceeds the President's targets by
$11.9 billion; the Senate-passed bill is $9.6 billion
over his proposal.
Overriding the President's veto would require a
two-thirds vote in both chambers. This is not
impossible, but it is a heavy lift. If the
override fails, Congress will have to engage in
negotiations with the President, which could result in
cuts to key
services.
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House Republication WIA Proposal
Eliminates Provisions for Women
As
reported in last week's Insider,
Republican Education and Labor Committee Members have
introduced a bill to reauthorize the Workforce
Investment Act (WIA), the nation's job training program,
which has been up for renewal since 2003. Ranking Member
Buck McKeon attempted last week to debate the WIA
proposal during committee consideration of another bill.
Although the issue was dropped, McKeon's action prompted
his Democratic counterpart, Chairman George Miller, to
promise that majority Committee staff would soon renew
discussions on reauthorizing the WIA
law.
While Women Work! supports efforts to move the
WIA reauthorization process forward, we have serious
concerns about McKeon's bill (HR 3747).The bill would
eliminate several provisions in current law that help
women to re-enter the workforce after caring for
families and encourage the workforce investment system
to actively promote higher-paying, non-traditional jobs
for women. Specifically, HR 3747
would:
- Eliminate innovative programs for
displaced homemakers as an allowable use of statewide
funds.
- Eliminate programs to increase the
number of individuals training for and placed in
nontraditional employment as an allowable use of
statewide funds.
- Eliminate the specification that
training services provided under WIA may include
occupational skill training for non-traditional
employment.
Women
Work! will work with Education and Labor Committee staff
on both sides to ensure that these devastating changes
are not included in the final House WIA reauthorization
bill.
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