The House passed the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act on Wednesday by a vote of 415-6 by the House of Representatives. It was approved by the Senate last month by a vote of 95-3. The bill is a reauthorization of the Workforce Investment Act signed in 1998. The new bill combines 15 existing training programs and sets a common metric for measuring outcomes. The bill is now on the way to the President to sign.
“This is a great opportunity for us to show we can get things done,” Boehner said, in apparent acknowledgment of how rare bipartisan cooperation has become. The American people’s priorities, he said, “are, frankly, our priorities.”
Boehner said that the bill should help give the millions of unemployed Americans the skills needed to fill the approximately 4 million job openings in the U.S. Too bad there are over 9 million looking for jobs and millions more considered underemployed. At least it is a start.