Mr. PAUL. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, this bill is an attempt to improve the Federal jobs training program. We now have over 700 different programs, and quite literally, it is a mess. This bill is a well-intentioned piece of legislation that does make some token changes and some improvement. They may work, they may not.

I would like to address another subject, which is, should we be involved at all? If we have tried it for 30 years and it is not working, when will we ask ourselves, should we be in the business of job training? Quite frankly, I am not very confident that we here in the Congress are smart enough to do it.

Always the argument is that if this is a slightly better approach to last year's approach, this is a movement in the right direction. But some day we have to ask the question whether or not endorsing the same philosophic principle of a bad program is really going to solve our problems. We have no evidence that this approach will work. Most likely this will become just a bureaucratic adjustment. There will be a cost in the adjustment, but ultimately Government will once again fail in its attempt to do something that it was not designed to do. This idea of local control and block grants is something that sounds good, it sounds like they are moving in the right direction, but the odds of it really benefiting are very, very slim.

Government really is not smart enough to do what is intended in a program like job training. We are not, here in the Congress, smart enough to know what the future is and to make business decisions. It is rather sad to see our business leaders advocating a piece of legislation like this, rather than them understanding and resorting to the market to decide when and how to train workers.

Instead, they use their energies to come and transfer funds from one group to another in the pretense that they are able, in partnership with the Government, to design a program that will fit the marketplace. There is no sign, there is no evidence that a program like this has been permitted under the Constitution. But better yet, under today's circumstances, and eventually this will prevail, do we really have the funds to do something that is not working? The funds are not there, and any time we deal with a program like this, we have to think that it is a contribution to the high deficits that we are running.

Mr. Chairman, H.R. 1385 is flawed in that it endorses the very same principles that have been used for 30 years, arguing that the Federal Government and government bureaucrats know more than what the market knows.

I would like to list a few mandates of the bill. No. 1, it mandates that States submit a 35-year plan for adult job training and literacy on the approval of the Secretaries of Education and Labor. It mandates that States establish local work force development boards whose functions and composition are determined by Federal law.

It mandates that the local work force board meet Federal core indicators. It mandates that local work force boards be dominated by representatives of the business community. That does not give me a whole lot of encouragement, another step toward replacing the free enterprise system with corporatism.

If Members like mandates, they certainly will be pleased with this piece of legislation. It spends taxpayers' dollars, the victims, for skill upgrading for incumbent workers. Those who are still working are required to pay for those who think they are going to get trained, thus creating a new entitlement program for already-employed workers.

It spends taxpayers' dollars on grants to business and unions for demonstration projects. It spends taxpayers' dollars on family literacy services. It spends taxpayers' dollars on the National Institute for Literacy, the type of bureaucracy this Congress should be shutting down, not expanding. It spends taxpayers' dollars on job training services which the business community and individual workers should be paying for themselves.

Incidentally, Mr. Chairman, and I know this would be of the least amount of interest to so many here, but the truth of the matter is, Congress has no constitutional authority to mandate or operate any job training programs.

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. PAUL. I yield to the gentleman from Illinois.

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me. I wanted to associate myself with the thrust of his remarks. I may feel a little more benignly toward the uses of government than he, but essentially his critique of this bill I share.

(Responding to Congressman Paul…)

(Read what Ron Paul later said about this "criticism.")

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, … I wanted to respond to two of my good friends, first my distinguished colleague, the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Paul]. He is one of the most consistent Members I have ever met in Congress. As a Libertarian he does not believe in Federal job training or most Federal anything, and in that he has been consistent and logical. I appreciate that, and I support him and vote with him most of the time. But I am not a Libertarian and so sometimes we are going to disagree…

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Mr. RIGGS. Mr. Chairman, … I know that we are anxious to conclude the debate, but I simply could not allow, in good conscience, the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hyde] and the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Paul] to mischaracterize this bill.

Let me preface my remarks by saying that the gentleman from Illinois has a very well-deserved reputation for being one of the most respected, even revered Members of Congress, and the gentleman from Texas, as the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Souder], pointed out, has been absolutely consistent and constant in his views both as a private citizen and as a political leader in the country. …