quorum call:

quorum call:

a senator: madam chair. the presiding officer: the senator from ohio. mr. portman: i'm here to talk but current technical education and legislation we've introduced. the presiding officer: the senate is in a quorum call. mr. portman: i ask unanimous consent the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection.

mr. portman: i'm here to talk about career and technical education and legislation we've introduced that would provide more training opportunities for people who need these in-demand jobs out there. when people hear about career and technical education sometimes they wonder what we're referring to. this is really high school programs, used to be called vocational education for many in my generation might remember it as that. but it's not your father's oldsmobile, not the old voc-ed programs you might remember. it's really impressive. if you go to these schools today and ohio has great career and technical academies and schools, you'll see something amazing. you'll see young people being trained up for some of the most sophisticated jobs out there there bioscience, technology, welding, of course, and manufacturing in ohio is a big deal. but also truck drivers to get a c.d.l., a commercial truck driving license. you mites see somebody -- you

might see somebody there interested in going into fire fighting or c.t.s. we had a young man who is going to be hired by a fire department there. these are great opportunities for our young people. these c.t.e. schools are incredibly important because the skills are needed, training is needed. some of the challenges we've had is sometimes parents who are advising their kids are saying you need to go to a four-year college or university like i did or maybe like your uncle or aunt did, or maybe that's the goal they have for their kids, and that's fine. for many young people that's appropriate. but for others, what a great opportunity to be able to get out of high school, get a job immediately, a good-paying job with good benefits and then at some point, because often in these schools, including in ohio, you get college credit while you're in high school to go on to college later. perhaps your employer will pay for that. this morning i was with a young woman named jordan. she is at the great oaks career

and technical center in ohio. jordan is becoming a well der. as -- a welder. she is going to have amazing opportunities. she does. she's got plenty of job opportunities because she is going to have the skill so badly needed in ohio right now. our manufacturing sector is desperate for welders and they're willing to pay good money so she can make $45,000, $50,000 a year at 18 years old as a welder instead of taking on the student debt and in ohio it is about $27,000 on average, somebody graduating from community college or a four-year college or university is taking on significant debt. so this is an opportunity for us to get more young people into career and technical education. i think we ought to do it. we have a good economy right now, thanks to tax reform and regulatory relief. there's a lot of hiring going on there's actually higher wages right now. in ohio, we have a number of people who are looking for employees.

the help wanted signs are out there. we have about 148,000 jobs available in the state, if you look at ohiomeansjobs.com, a website that offers these positions, there are about 250,000 ohioans out of work. how does that make sense? it makes sense because if you look at the jobs being offered many of them are jobs where you have to have a skill, you have to be a coder or you have to be a machine operator or a welder or you have to have some bioscience background to be a tech. if we had the skills training, we'd be able to fill these jobs, which is great for the companies and for the economy, but also just, again, a great opportunity for these young people. in 2018, our economy added 2323,000 jobs per month on average. that's about twice what the pre-tax reform baseline was in the congressional budget office of only 107,000 jobs per month. we more than doubled. we had strong wage growth over the last 12 months. wage growth in the last year is

higher than any time in the last decade. in ohio we had flat wages. last month the average was about 3.4% growth for private-sector workers. by the way, more for blue-collar workers than for white-collar workers, supervisory workers, which is all good news. we've so we've got a lot of good things going on as far as increasing jobs, increasing wages, increasing benefits. much of that due to tax reform. i have gone around our state and talked to folks at roundtable discussions, went to over 25 businesses to talk specifically, what did you do with the tax savings. every one of them has a great story. with the pro-growth policies kicking in, what i hear is the tax reform helped us, the regulatory was a good idea, but we need workers and to have the skills to fill the jobs that we have. the mismatch between the skills out there and the jobs that

skills gap is what we need to close. there are lots of ways to do that. if you look at the national skills coalition, they'll estimate that nearly half of all job openings between now and 2022 will be middle-skill jobs that don't remember a four-year degree. and then when you get out of high school to have a certificate where you can get into a course where you can learn how to do one of these skills. although you're not getting an associate's degree or bachelor's degree, you're getting a stackable certificate that can lead to a degree later. if you look at the skills gap, deloit and the manufacturing institute have highlighted there are so many jobs that need these skills. they estimate there are 2.4 million positions that will likely be unfilled. and this economic impact, not having these jobs filled is about a $2.5 trillion hit to our

economy. this is why all of this is so important. about six years ago we started the career and technical caucus here in the senate. there was two of us, senator kaine from virginia and myself and now we are have 20 senators on this caucus. why? many have been hearing about this good back home. it's been helpful for us to put together some bipartisan legislation that helps to promote career an technical education. last year in the perkins bill, for instance, senator kaine and i got legislation in to help improve the quality of c.t.e. programs, ensuring college credit is offered to make sure that young people and their parents know about this opportunity. just a couple of week ago, senator kaine and i reintroduced education called jump-start our businesses by supporting students act. that acronym is the jobs act. and the jobs act is something

we've introduced in the last couple of congresses. but i really feel like its time has could i feel like it's tan opportunity right now for us to move forward with the jobs act. one, we're hearing from all around the country the need for this, but, second, because we have the likelihood of a higher education bill moving forward this year. it's a really commonsense solution to help solve this skills gap problem we're talking about because it says very simply with regard to pell grants, which is for low-income students, instead of just making them available for community college or for four-year colleges, universities or for longer-term courses, why not allow pell grants to be used for shorter-term training programs. that is what is needed. when i talk to students here, as i do back in the state of ohio, what they tell me is, rob, i don't have the money to get a driver's license, you know, to go through that process much less to get a certificate to

become a welder or to become a coder or a tech in a hospital setting. so -- and yet the government will give me a pell grant for me to go to a junior college or a community college or a university, but i can't get a pell grant to help me get the training i need that i need to get a job that i know is there ready, good pay, good benefits. to me, that shows how our system is not working with regard to the modern economy and the needs that we have right now. and it's not fair to those students. so i think we ought to be table to allow those students to use those pell grants for the shorter-term training programs of less than 15 weeks. i think it is a matter of efficiency for the pell grant and the taxpayer. unfortunately with regard to pell most people who take a pell go to school, go to a college, don't graduate, and there are lots of reasons for that. i think the main reason is many of them have to drop out because they have to work, but in the meantime they don't have the degree. so they have the pell but they

don't get the degree, not even a certificate, whereas in the short-term training programs, trust me, if someone starts off the training program, it is much more likely they'll get the certificate. again, they can see just around the corner with the -- where the job is. the certificate is, in a sense, the ticket to that job and it is a shorter-term prospect. so i think it's a very efficient use also of the pell grant and we should expand the pell grant. let's not take it away from colleges and universities, not at all. the pell grant is an important program, but let's allow it to be used for the short-term programs. i was at the c.f. program, and i went to a roundtable on workforce development. we had a lot of local businesses who were talking about how great these programs have been for them. we had students there, the chamber of commerce and the mayor of being a rorn was there and some -- akron was there and

eileen shapiro and some of those students were already working, in high school or local community colleges businesses like the k company, based in akron, they work with local high schools and get young people on the right occasional track to be able to work in the hvac field. if you're an hvac tech, you can get a job. they are helping the economy, they are helping this particular business, they are really helping the students to be able to get a great job. the stark state president is very innovative and working again with our high schools and working with the business community trying to ensure we're all working together on this. i'll tell you, dr. jones, the employers around that table, the indicators -- educators around the table, the students around the table were excited about the jobs act. they know it will work. they know it will deal with exactly the problem they are seeing in the local community. last week i toured a company in

hubert, ohio, called warren fabricating and machining. as always, i heard about the need for skilled workers. it's a great example of a company that has taken advantage of the tax reform and tax cuts, they bought a new machine that is effective for their company to be table to compete with china and others, they've been able to increase salaries with the tax benefits, but the issue is they need a workforce. they can't find the people. i visited an advanced manufacturer called ryanstall, they have parts for the aerospace and defense industry. others were there, as well as butler tech, a very innovative company. i had an opportunity to meet with a lot of students and one of them was a high school student named jake.

he's a chemical operator at a nearby manufacturer called pilot. he's a veteran, completed his certificate training and his employer is helping him to complete his education. connor was there, a high school student running machines and learning advanced manufacturing while working at a place called r.b. tool. torres is working there and making sure that tools are up to speed at the company named ryanstall. david fox said that his combined class of graduates had a combined total of 100 job offers. these are young people, 28 young people, they had more than 100 job offers. again, these are good job offers, we're talking about $40,000, $50,000 a year, jobs that pay $15 an hour. employers will also continue to

pay for them to continue their education. president trump came to the manufacturing center in lima, ohio. they do something unique in america, which is they build tanks. so the kind of welding they have to be trained on is incredibly sophisticated, difficult to do. the kind of machine work they have to do is really difficult, cutting the tanks' steel is an incredibly difficult task plus some of the alloys that they use to protect our troops in the field. they need to hire 400 additional workers in the next year or so partly because with the defense buildup we're putting more money into the plant, and i'm very pleased to say that president trump in his budget put more funding into the lima tank company. they need skilled workers, various types of engineers, these are good-paying jobs, great opportunities for young people whether they are coming up through the ranks, true the

high school or mid-career and changing jobs, it would be great to help them get the people they need and the jocks act is what they say will be exactly what they need to do that. at stab manufacturing in dayton, the c.e.o. of the company told me that he believes welders coming out of high school will be better off financially than many attorneys or doctors. i asked him what he meant by that. he pointed out with while an attorney or professional might make more coming out of school, by the time they get out of school, law school as an example, and start investing, that welders will be on their way to building a significant nest egg. a welder makes $60,000 a year starting at age 18. let's say no student debt because, again, through the certificate program and through a pell if we get the jobs act passed in particular, this person's able to be table to do so without any student debt,

using an online calculator and 8% growth, that person sets aside 8% of their income up to age 67. this assumes that a person gets no raise at all. that person will make more money, but assuming no raise, $50,000 a year, $2.5 million at 67. that is a nice nest egg. compare that to an attorney making $100,000 at a big law firm, starts investing at 30 years old after getting through school, paying off debt, maybe later, let's say 30 to be conservative, that person sets aside 10% of his or her income, $2.2 million by age 67. even though the attorney had a higher salary and investing twice as much each month, it's the welder making $50,000 a year that will be better off. part of this is getting people into these jobs, getting them

into these jobs when they are young when they can make investments in their retirement and make investments in a car, be able to buy a house, able to put money aside for their kids' education, just to be able to have that peace of mind with knowing that you will have this profession and this opportunity to get ahead early in life. so i'm hoping that we did get the jobs act passed because it will help provide so many people, particularly young people, these opportunities if we can shift the paradigm. you know, stop this notion of thinking that everybody who is going through high school needs to go to a four-year college or university right away, instead think about how do you enis sure that this -- ensure that this young person can get ahead and learn a skill where there is immediate need and help our economy, because our biggest challenge as i see, not just in the manufacturing sector where it is particularly obvious, but across the board inboyo -- in

bioscience and other professions, the other challenge we have is workforce. the jobs act has been endorsed by the national skills coalition, the association of community colleges, i know the community colleges have put this highest on their list. the american association of community colleges and other groups. i'm also pleased to say again it's in the budget so president trump puts together a budget every year. this year's budget actually has our jobs act included in it. so it's one that's totally bipartisan. senator kaine from virginia and i have been coauthors of this legislation over the years, we continue to work closely together on this -- together on this. we have 10 cosponsors. it's a bipartisan group, mixed republican and democrat. we also have a lot 0 of outside -- a lot of outside stakeholders supporting and, again, now in the president's budget. the reason we're getting all this support is because it works. it works. it will cover programs that at a minimum require 150 hours and

eight weeks to complete. there's some alternative programs that limit the programs by requiring them to be 320 hours. i will tell you our community colleges tell us that none of their short-term training programs would qualify for that higher number of hours, such as precision machining, electrical trades, that will fit in the jocks act but not some of the alternatives being discussed. we need the jobs act now, and there is a great vehicle for it, which is the higher education. and the chierm -- and the chairman of that committee is senator lamar alexander, he understands the skills needed to fill the jobs that companies that are desperate to fill. he sees this in his state of tennessee where there are auto manufacturers looking for more skilled workers every day. as we work to reauthorize that legislation, the higher education act, my hope is that colleagues on both sides of the

aisle will join us to ensure that the jobs act is included in that. that's be sure to deal with the fairness issue here that we have a sense of understanding about our economy and what the needs are right now and a lot of that need is in skills and the kind of skills that the jobs act would provide. it just makes too much sense. if we make career and technical jobs a priority, we will help tens of thousands of our young people be able to achieve their dreams, have better opportunities and just as important we're going to be able to help our economy. especial to ensure we do have here in the united states a growing economy where we have better tax policy, better regulation policy but also the worker to ensure companies don't pick up and move because they don't have the workforce here. as companies tell me in ohio, rob, we could do what we're doing here in other places and not just indiana which is next to ohio but maybe india. we don't want that. we want to have the workforce here that is needed to be able to keep these good jobs and keep these companies here in this

country to ensure we can keep moving in a positive direction. and again, ensure that ohioans can develop the skills they need to grow the career of their choice and to fulfill their potential in life. thank you, madam president. i yield back my time.

mr. casey: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from pennsylvania. mr. casey: thank you, mr. president. i ask consent to vitiate the quorum call. the presiding officer: we're not in a quorum c