President Obama: Job #1 Should be to Eliminate Wasteful and Duplicative Job Training Programs

Tonight President Obama will speak to a joint session of Congress (minus a few Republicans) about his latest plan to stimulate the economy and create jobs.  Remember the last time he did that?  It cost the country almost a trillion dollars and unemployment skyrocketed.  Indications are the total price tag of this package will be between $300 billion and $400 billion.  According to The Hill, “the plan is expected to cost between $300 billion and $400 billion and contain a mix of tax cuts and infrastructure projects.  The White House spokesman emphasized that the president’s plan would be deficit-neutral, implying that spending increases would be matched with cuts and tax increases.”

Since President Obama is concerned about jobs (as he should be) and the deficit, the first place to look to “pay” for any new projects should be to look at all the duplicative federal job training programs.  In January 2011, the Government Accountability Office issued a report, “Multiple Employment and Training Programs: Providing Information on Colocating Services and Consolidating Administrative Structures Could Promote Efficiencies,” which noted that in 2009 there were 47 employment and training programs that cost $18 billion.  As a follow up to that report, Sen. Tom Coburn, M.D. (R-Okla.) issued a report in February 2011,  “Help Wanted: How Federal Job Training Programs are Failing Workers,” which highlighted some of the most egregious examples of wasted tax dollars on job training.

Sen. Coburn’s report exposed 25 projects that wasted federal tax dollars and the following is a sampling of some of the findings:

“Job Training Funds to Repay Student Loans of Graduate Students Entering Jobs Rich Field – During a period of high unemployment, federal job training money is paying off the student loan debt for a few lucky Iowa students.  In 2010, the federal government funneled $730,000 in taxpayer dollars to the University of Iowa to help well educated graduate students leave school without debt. These lucky students are training for advanced degrees in a high demand field where jobs are plentiful.

Jobs Mirage: Training Dollars for a Jobless Field – New Jersey received $119 million in stimulus dollars to train and place workers in jobs that make low-income homes more energy efficient. However, a state audit found program cost controls to be ineffectively implemented; required inspections not completed; and many contractors out-of-compliance with wage requirements. As of July 2010, only 5% of funding was spent. $2.7 of the $8.7 million in expenditures submitted to the state appeared fraudulent. Only $1 million of the $4 million set aside for job training has been used to train and certify job seekers.

Lost Job Corps Opportunities: Multi-Year Lease Wastes $31 Million – The federal Job Corps program wasted $31 million in stimulus dollars when securing an $82 million multi-year lease with one Los Angeles entity, according to the Department of Labor Inspector General (IG).”

Sen. Coburn’s recommendations to address the problems with job training programs are to: consolidate federal programs; eliminate federal programs without metrics; improve federal program metrics of remaining programs; better focus federal efforts by narrowing programs‘ objectives; and target eligibility of federal programs to needy.

Sen. Coburn has once again hit the nail square on the head with the report.  Failed job training programs hurts taxpayers and those that need the training.

The 2009 stimulus was a failure.  What was promised to alleviate unemployment seemingly made things worse by increasing spending and the increasing burden of a ballooning deficit and debt on all taxpayers.  In an ironic twist of fate, the first step that the President could do to show some commonsense by the federal government is to eliminate wasteful and unnecessary job training programs.