During a House Appropriations Committee hearing on Thursday, Rep. Riley Moore (R-WV) questioned Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer about supporting trade school graduates entering the workforce.
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00:00Mr. Moore from West Virginia. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Madam
00:06Secretary, for being here. The union labor in my district is very thrilled to
00:13have you. All the workers in West Virginia are thrilled to have you in
00:16this position, so thank you. Just by background, I would mention, since we're
00:20talking about trade school, myself, I went to trade school. I actually used to
00:25be a welder. That's how I started off my career. I come from a multi-generational
00:31family of labor union membership, and it provided my family a very good life, and
00:39we owe a lot to that. To that end, I wanted to highlight something for you, and
00:45that is this program when I was State Treasurer of West Virginia that I started
00:49that I'd like to work on with your office, and I'm going to introduce
00:52legislation on. It's called the Jump Start Savings Program, so one of the things I
00:57noticed when I was working in labor myself is that when you graduate from one of
01:03these apprenticeship programs or trade school, sometimes the barrier of
01:09entry into the workforce was not so much paying for the school, you know, obviously
01:13union apprenticeship is structurally different than that, but when you were
01:18coming out, it was difficult to get going where you had to buy the tools or
01:21equipment, necessary licenses, certifications, or new business startup
01:27costs to really get going, so we started this program called Jump Start, which was
01:31endorsed in the West Virginia legislature and passed in legislature, but endorsed by
01:36our trade unions as well as the Chamber of Commerce. Not too often those two come
01:41together on something, and what the program does, it allows individuals to start a
01:46savings account that looks like 529, but functions different, and it's for after
01:50graduation, and it allows individuals to save money for tools, equipment, licenses,
01:55certifications, and new business startup costs, and the accounts stay open in perpetuity, and one of
02:01the structural issues that we had, because it was a state-level program, we had tax
02:05incentives on it where you could write off up to $25,000 a year money that went into
02:11the account, or as you pulled money out up to $25,000, so it was a tax-advantaged
02:16account. 529, the college savings plan, obviously, you're not paying the capital gains tax, and that's a federal issue, right?
02:23We were able to waive it at the state level, but not at the federal level. This is a
02:28program that I think that would be really beneficial to the workers of this
02:32country when they're coming out of a trade school, coming out of a union
02:36apprenticeship program, looking to start a new business, because we're always
02:40thinking about trade school and apprenticeship programs, and those are
02:44great, and we need more of them. We absolutely need more of them. Just in in my
02:48district alone, where we have Northern Community College, the welders there, it's hard
02:53to keep them long enough to graduate because they're getting jobs so fast, so
02:57that's the struggle is that so many of them are so employable, they're going out
03:01and working immediately, but is this something that you think your office would
03:06be willing to work with my office in trying to get a piece of legislation
03:11together and pass here in Congress? Oh, absolutely. There's nothing more than an
03:16agency, or I mean we used to work with agencies as a member of Congress, to assist in any of the
03:20technical assistance that you need to get that done, and as you work through Congress,
03:24I would look forward to working with you on this issue and you know get it across
03:28the line if that's something Congress wants to focus on. Absolutely. Well, I hope
03:32they will, and I look to the other side of the aisle, maybe perhaps some of them
03:35might be interested in supporting this. It passed bipartisanly in the West
03:39Virginia State Legislature, and it's, I'll give you one example, like auto
03:42mechanics is a great one. They have to buy all of their own tools when they come out of
03:47school and it's tens of thousands of dollars, and if they don't have the
03:51ability to save, to be able to buy those tools, it's a real barrier to entry into
03:57the workforce, and that's just one great example. I'll end with this, is that in
04:04terms of protecting the workers out there, I would be remissed if I didn't
04:09mention the tragedy that happened in northern West Virginia under the last
04:14administration. We were not able to get tariff relief on tin plate steel in this
04:22country. Biden, President Biden, refused to put tariffs on tin plate steel. We had to
04:28idle a steel plant in Weirton, West Virginia that cost us over 3,000 United
04:34steel worker jobs, and nobody did anything about it. The Biden administration was
04:40supposed to be the most pro-union administration in history, left them in the
04:45dark. I mean, it's a tragedy. They got sold out for whatever reason by Beijing
04:53Biden, and they all lost their jobs, and that plan is idled. We have used to have
04:57two blast furnaces in the United States that made tin plate steel. We're now down
05:02to one left, so thank you for your work that you're doing with USTR, and if you want to
05:07support workers, I would support tariffs. If on the other side of the aisle, you want
05:11to support workers, support tariffs on steel and aluminum, because that's a way
05:14that we're going to protect those jobs. I yield back. Thank you.