WASHINGTON, D.C. – In her first House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee hearing, Congresswoman Carol Miller (R-WV) advocated for creating and maintaining good-paying American jobs to protect American energy workers who have lost their jobs due to damaging Democrat energy policies, such as President Obama's "War on Coal" and President Biden killing the Keystone Pipeline.
The hearing evaluated the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program, which designates federal assistance and training programs to workers and firms affected by foreign trade in an effort to prepare them for a new occupation. House Republicans emphasized the importance of protecting and creating jobs through pro-growth policies, rather than displacing thousands of hardworking Americans through failed job-destroying policies including Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), and the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill (MTB).
Congresswoman Miller questioned Mason Bishop, Former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Employment and Training at the U.S. Department of Labor under President George W. Bush, about how, as Congress reevaluates the TAA program, we can learn from failed policies of the past. She further questioned him about how we can be focusing on job creation.
Click here to watch her full remarks or read below:
Thank you Chairman Blumenauer and Ranking Member Buchanan, and thank you to all of our witnesses for being here today.
My district was hit hard by President Obama's "War on Coal." Southern West Virginia saw entire towns decimated as a result of bad policy. As coal mines were shuttered, entire communities lost restaurants, machine shops, grocery stores, and countless jobs.
Under the Trump Administration, we saw our economy start to turn around. Now, President Biden has announced a new climate initiative with a focus on green jobs. His climate czar John Kerry has even stated that he wants displaced workers to help build solar panels. However, these green jobs retraining programs have been unsuccessful in the past. As we re-evaluate TAA, we must ensure that we are not focusing on such failed training initiatives, and instead focus on job creation.
Further, we need to focus on policies that create jobs like TPA, GSP, and MTB.
Taking workers that have worked the same job for most of their adult lives and retraining them is no easy feat. Coalfields Development Corporation in my district does just this. This program focuses on market driven and employer-driven solutions, not top down mandates.
We can all work towards the same goal. We can do this through strengthening U.S. rare earth mineral production and U.S. mining for metallurgical coal, so we can provide our steel industry with the resources they need to create solar panels. This is the market driven approach we need.
Mr. Bishop, I ask for unanimous consent to insert this article by Brent Orrell and Mason Bishop from February 16, 2021 entitled "Biden's ‘Green Jobs' Mirage" into the record.
In your recent article in Real Clear Policy, you talk about the challenges facing federal green retraining programs. Can you discuss some of the facts that you discussed in the article and how we should be focusing on creating jobs, rather than cancelling them?
As Congress reevaluates TAA, how can we incorporate the lessons learned from the failures of the programs you describe so we can make TAA more effective?
###
Original source can be found here.
