Education Reform Act (Passed)

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

How accruate have those projections been historically? I have heard stories like "The top 12 professions, half of them didn't exist fifteen years ago".

[Associate Justice PiT]

     What better suggestion do you have here? We can just sit on our hands and be left with a populace that is largely unprepared to meet our labor needs, holding large numbers of degrees in shrinking, glutted fields. This is a point where we're talking about doing something. The projections may not be accurate for 10 years later, but they can at least be accurate for next year.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

     What better suggestion do you have here? We can just sit on our hands and be left with a populace that is largely unprepared to meet our labor needs, holding large numbers of degrees in shrinking, glutted fields. This is a point where we're talking about doing something. The projections may not be accurate for 10 years later, but they can at least be accurate for next year.

I agree with your point entirely, PiT, my point is try and quantify at some level, the degree of improvement in this regard.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     What better suggestion do you have here? We can just sit on our hands and be left with a populace that is largely unprepared to meet our labor needs, holding large numbers of degrees in shrinking, glutted fields. This is a point where we're talking about doing something. The projections may not be accurate for 10 years later, but they can at least be accurate for next year.

I agree with your point entirely, PiT, my point is try and quantify at some level, the degree of improvement in this regard.

     Eh, it's difficult to do. The important thing to realize is that college isn't always the answer; there are some rapidly growing fields now that require only vocational or technical education.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Indeed and you pointed it out on the other forum that it is likely several technical and trade skills will probably do better than many fields require college degrees.

[Potus]

Does everyone in this body honestly agree that the federal government should be in the position to write direct, legislative funding prescriptions for degrees in certain types of fields? I believe that we should establish mechanisms to allow funding to flow toward in-demand degrees and programs. Income share agreements, expanded tax benefits for corporate scholarship/training programs, etc. If we're trying to advocate for workforce development, let's not pass a law that is meaningless in three or four years.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Does everyone in this body honestly agree that the federal government should be in the position to write direct, legislative funding prescriptions for degrees in certain types of fields? I believe that we should establish mechanisms to allow funding to flow toward in-demand degrees and programs. Income share agreements, expanded tax benefits for corporate scholarship/training programs, etc. If we're trying to advocate for workforce development, let's not pass a law that is meaningless in three or four years.

Preferably, no. However, as I see it, the purpose of this bill is two fold and aims to avoid flooding over crowed fields while at the same time ensuring an appropriate level of skilled professionals.

I will be honest, a lot of this whining about lack of skills is a cover for labor expense minimization. Companies want to outsource all the training and educating to tax payers and acquire employees as cheap as possible. It is fundamentally impossible for us to train someone 100% for a specific job like these employeers want these days, and especially if that company plans to dispose of them within two or three years.

I would not oppose tax benefits as you say, but to me, it seems like an incentive too small to reverse a corporate trend thirty years in the making.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Does everyone in this body honestly agree that the federal government should be in the position to write direct, legislative funding prescriptions for degrees in certain types of fields? I believe that we should establish mechanisms to allow funding to flow toward in-demand degrees and programs. Income share agreements, expanded tax benefits for corporate scholarship/training programs, etc. If we're trying to advocate for workforce development, let's not pass a law that is meaningless in three or four years.

Preferably, no. However, as I see it, the purpose of this bill is two fold and aims to avoid flooding over crowed fields while at the same time ensuring an appropriate level of skilled professionals.

I will be honest, a lot of this whining about lack of skills is a cover for labor expense minimization. Companies want to outsource all the training and educating to tax payers and acquire employees as cheap as possible. It is fundamentally impossible for us to train someone 100% for a specific job like these employeers want these days, and especially if that company plans to dispose of them within two or three years.

I would not oppose tax benefits as you say, but to me, it seems like an incentive too small to reverse a corporate trend thirty years in the making.

     Indeed, it would be ideal for companies to take on the challenge of training employees themselves and take on the costs. Unless that happens, and there is little indication that it will, there's only so much we can do about it. A degree that's in demand today may be worthless in four years and someone going to school for that field will be screwed. That's an issue we've been facing for at least 15 years, and I'm not sure that leaving education alone will produce anything better.

[Potus]

"Leaving education alone probably won't produce anything better" is not a justification for action. Inaction is the natural state of things. This bill doesn't seem to really address a problem in the longterm. A better way to make the workforce match the jobs is to dramatically expand investment opportunities in workers, not centrally planned degree assistance.

Motion to table.

[Potus]

Withdrawing my motion to table.

[Potus]

I propose to strike existing language, including the title, and replace it with:

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[Potus]

We're in a state of crisis and that legislation needs pushed through. I encourage everyone to support the amendment.

This bill has already burned through most of its legislative time, making this a particularly good opportunity to expedite the ISIS bill.

[Clark Kent]

Senator Potus, I agree that this is a crisis that must be addressed immediately. However, I believe that it would make far more sense to propose a separate bill for this issue, in the Legislation Introduction Thread.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

I object to the amendment proposed by Senator Potus. As the Speaker noted, it makes more sense to propose a separate bill addressing the threat posed by ISIS that to scuttle months of hard work on this issue.

I likewise object to the motion to table and call for a final vote.

[Senator Cris]

I agree with Truman.
There are a lot of free spots and the bill proposed by Potus needs an hard work on another separate thread.

[Potus]

This has already run out the legislative clock and is not as pressing. We can bring up the current text of this bill in another thread without having to put combatting ISIS through the bureaucratic circus.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

This has already run out the legislative clock and is not as pressing. We can bring up the current text of this bill in another thread without having to put combatting ISIS through the bureaucratic circus.

I'm not sure what you mean by "bureaucratic circus." There are plenty of empty slots on the floor that could be filled by this bill: it's only a matter of the Speaker taking action (which would have to happen for this amendment to move forward as well).

[Clark Kent]

I'll extend debate on Senator Potus's amendment for another 24 hours.


I still believe that this would be far better served as a separate bill, and if this amendment fails, I'll be happy to sponsor it as a separate bill myself.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

I'll extend debate on Senator Potus's amendment for another 24 hours.


I still believe that this would be far better served as a separate bill, and if this amendment fails, I'll be happy to sponsor it as a separate bill myself.

Such a bill has already been introduced; why not bring it to the floor immediately?

[Clark Kent]

I'll extend debate on Senator Potus's amendment for another 24 hours.


I still believe that this would be far better served as a separate bill, and if this amendment fails, I'll be happy to sponsor it as a separate bill myself.

Such a bill has already been introduced; why not bring it to the floor immediately?

Huh. For some reason I didn't notice that. I'll bring it to the floor immediately.

[Potus]

I'll sithdraw this amendment went the first Aye is cast in a final vote on the ISIS fighting law.

[Potus]

Amendment withdrawn.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Unless some kind of arrangement regarding including incentives towards worker training programs on the part of employers, can be reached, I don't see where there is much more room to go on this bill unless I have missed something. Which is of course possible, since I have been missing a lot of things lately.

Senator Truman, in an earlier you post were you objecting to both a motion to table and a final vote, or objecting to the former and calling for the latter?

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Senator Truman, in an earlier you post were you objecting to both a motion to table and a final vote, or objecting to the former and calling for the latter?

I was objecting to Potus' motion to table and introducing my own motion for a final vote. Speaking of which...

Motion for a final vote.

[Clark Kent]

Looking for a second...