The DC Mind, Part 244,396

Along with nuking the Department of Education, reducing EPA by 75%, and eliminating the Department of Energy and "Head Start", Conservatives should be eliminating Federal "Job Training."

It's worse than just a waste of time.  It's a huge waste of money.

In 1962, Congress passed the Manpower Development and Training Act (MDTA) to provide training for workers who lost their jobs due to automation or other technological developments. Two years later, the General Accounting Office (GAO) discovered that any trainee in this program who held a job for a single day was counted as "permanently employed"—a statistical charade by the Department of Labor to camouflage its lack of results. A decade after MDTA's inception, GAO reported that it was failing to teach valuable job skills or place trainees in private jobs and was marred by an "overriding concern with filling available slots for a particular program," regardless of what trainees actually needed.

Of course, our Congress "fixed" the problems in 1973 with a new law (and lots more money!!)

...A 1979 Washington Post investigation concluded, "Incredibly, the government has kept no meaningful statistics on the effectiveness of these programs—making the past 15 years' effort almost worthless in terms of learning what works." CETA hirees were often assigned to do whatever benefited the government agency or nonprofit that put them on the payroll, with no concern for the trainees' development. An Urban Institute study of the mid-1980s concluded that participation in CETA programs resulted in "significant earnings losses for young men of all races and no significant effects for young women."

But Federal departmental empires were expanded!  Whassamatta THAT, turkey?

Well, Congress "fixed" that, too!!

...JTPA spent lavishly—to expand an Indiana circus museum, teach Washington taxi drivers to smile, provide foreign junkets for state and local politicians, and bankroll business relocations. According to the Labor Department's inspector general, young trainees were twice as likely to rely on food stamps after JTPA involvement than before since the "training" often included instructions on applying for an array of government benefits.

In the real world, this is called "three strikes."

Not in the DC Mind.

What we need, heah, Gomer, is a NEW NAME!!

...The Workforce Investment Act (WIA) replaced JTPA in 1998. Congress required a thorough evaluation of the law's impact on trainees by 2005. At last report, the Labor Department is promising it will be completed by 2015....

Ten years late.  Good enough for Gummint work.  (Yes, that's a bi-partisan "late."  But Conservatives know all about that crap, don't we?)

Isn't this enough?  We borrow to spend money on programs that we do NOT want--largely because they do NOT work.

Close it up.  Dump it.  Incinerate it.  Whatever.

HT:  AOSHQ