Ranking Member DeLauro Remarks at the Career Ready Students: Innovations from Community Colleges & Private Sector Hearing
Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (CT-03), Ranking Member of the House Appropriations Committee and the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Subcommittee, delivered the following remarks at the Subcommittee's hearing on preparing community college students for the workforce:
Thank you, Chairman Aderholt, for holding this hearing on how partnerships and collaboration between community colleges and the private sector can best prepare today’s students for tomorrow’s workforce.
My thanks — and a warm welcome — also go to today’s witnesses: Mr. Cooper, Dr. Karolewics, Mr. Parker, welcome to the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Subcommittee. And Dr. McCarthy, welcome back!
It is not lost on me that we gather today, on the verge of an Executive Order to dismantle the Department of Education. Monday night, President Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency terminated $1 billion in Education Department contracts and awards, including dozens of contracts awarded by the Institute of Education Sciences, the Department’s independent research and statistics panel that tracks school performance nationwide. Without IES’s critical work, parents, educators, and policymakers will be left in the dark when trying to compare student and schoolwide achievement.
Musk also canceled a national study on how we can improve elementary school students’ math skills, along with several grants to train and support more educators of color. They are taking a wrecking ball to the welfare of children in school and their ability to learn. It is unconscionable, I believe it is immoral, and it is unlawful. That is only where they began – they are coming for community colleges next.
Last week, President Trump reiterated that his top goal for his Secretary of Education nominee, Linda McMahon, was to, quote, “do a great job and put yourself out of a job.” I refuse to let this hearing be a distraction from where House Republicans want to go. The Department of Education is fundamental to the American Dream, and that will be demonstrated by our hearing today.
So, let us begin. Today’s hearing is on a critical matter – how can we best ensure that today’s secondary and post-secondary education students are studying and entering fields that best line up with the job market they will find when they graduate. How can public education do better as a ladder of opportunity? How can it play the role that it did for our Italian, Irish, Polish, and other parents, historically?
I am glad this subcommittee is revisiting this topic. We last held a hearing on this in 2021, where we discussed evidence-based strategies to support job seekers, including the Strengthening Community College Training Grant program created and funded by this subcommittee.
We created this program in my first year as Chair of this subcommittee because we know that community colleges are often best-positioned to support local workforce development needs.
In towns and regions around the country – urban and rural, small and large – community colleges are critical institutions for fostering an educated population and a highly skilled workforce. They have the best sense of both the needs of local industries, and the unique skills and talents of local students.
In my district around New Haven, Connecticut, we have three community colleges: Gateway in New Haven, Middlesex in Middletown, and Naugatuck Valley in Waterbury. I have worked extensively with all three colleges for years, and I have seen firsthand the transformational impact these institutions have on the lives and the futures of those they serve.
Not everyone needs a four-year degree, but everyone does need the education necessary to find good-paying jobs that provide economic security for themselves and their families. And community colleges can provide a more cost-effective option over other alternatives.
I am proud that this subcommittee has supported community colleges and workforce development in a bipartisan way in the past, but I fear that those days may be behind us.
We are four-and-a-half months past the end of the fiscal year, without a Labor-Health and Human Services-Education bill that can become law.
But the funding cuts in the fiscal year 2025 Labor-HHS-Education bill that has been proposed by the majority would take a wrecking ball to programs that help align post-secondary education with workforce needs.
There is a proposal of a cut of $1.7 billion from Workforce Innovation and Opportunity State Grants, slashing investments for both Youth Job Training and Adult Job Training programs that help prepare our lower income neighbors for the workforce.
Without these programs aligning students and adults with available job opportunities, we will have a less skilled workforce, higher unemployment, and greater strain on our safety net programs.
The majority has also proposed to cut student financial aid by over $1 billion, eliminating Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants for 833,000 students, and getting rid of 330,000 Federal Work Study positions that help students finance their postsecondary education.
And finally, the total elimination of a program that helps student-parents afford childcare while they attend community college classes will put education further out of reach for the families that need it most for their own economic security.
I am disheartened, to say the least, to see my colleagues across the aisle taking aim at the programs that help their own constituents advance their education – programs that grow local economies and improve the livelihoods of families. And when we sit down to negotiate a full-year funding bill that can reach 218 votes – which the House Republicans’ proposal cannot – I look forward to maintaining this funding that allows working people to climb up the ladder.
This Committee – and this Congress – should be focused on finishing full-year appropriations bills, but we now stand less than five weeks away from the March 14 deadline without so much as a topline agreement.
I think the American people are demanding help with the cost of living, the single biggest issue they are facing, and we can do that here. This committee has incredible power to change lives and help the middle class.
We can help make education affordable and make it easier to succeed in the workforce through our funding bills. But unfortunately, the pressing need to finish full year bills is not even the most urgent challenge to our federal education priorities.
The Trump Administration, and maybe the Musk Administration and his DOGE underlings – it is unclear to me who is calling the shots in the White House – are squaring their sights on the Department of Education.
The Department of Education – created by an act of Congress, funded by appropriations bills passed by Congress and signed into law – ensures that, no matter the wealth their family does or does not have, or whether they have a disability or other disadvantage, every single child has the opportunity to obtain an education, and dream for a better life for their kids. It is the embodiment of what Horace Mann called the “great equalizer.”
Education has and will always be locally-driven in this country. Curriculum and other policies are best left to state and local leaders. No one disputes that. But the role of the Department of Education is crucial in securing the opportunities and rights of every student in America.
Instead of shoring up our investments in America’s students, President Trump plans to follow the Project 2025 playbook and turn public education over to the highest bidders and wealthiest families.
Families and communities across the country are reeling from multiple crises in classrooms – skyrocketing costs for childcare, pre-K, and post-secondary education, learning loss and achievement gaps, educator shortages, and epidemics of loneliness and school violence – and they are looking to their elected leaders for solutions.
The American people need smaller class sizes and lower costs, but the President’s proposed Executive Order will bring the exact opposite. This Executive Order is about creating a country where education is not a public good for the benefit of all of society, but a wholly profit-driven enterprise.
This is about making sure a quality education is no longer accessible to middle class families – but only a privilege for the descendants of the wealthy.
Before the election, Donald Trump said he plans to cut investments in our children’s education, quote, “in half, and get much better education in some of the states.” End quote. No word on the fate of the children and families in any of the other states.
To the Chairman I have great respect for, I do not know if Alabama is counted in “some of the states.” And I am sure you do know this – through the Department of Education, Alabama annually receives: $239 million for the needs of 100,000 students with disabilities; $303 million to ensure there is a teacher in the classroom for 452,000 low-income students, or 63 percent of Alabama’s students; $36 million for career and technical education and workforce development; And $50 million to help make college more accessible for low-income and first-generation students, and for students with disabilities. This is in addition to hundreds of millions of dollars that go to Alabama students through Pell Grants and other Department of Education programs.
I do not know the details of Alabama’s state education funding, but
I doubt Alabama, or Connecticut, or any other state is ready to absorb the costs covered by the Department of Education.
Rather, the elimination of any of these programs will inevitably lead to more students being taught by fewer teachers, fewer opportunities for disadvantaged students, and lower achievement, lower economic mobility, and lower prosperity for the majority of Americans who are not already well-off and well-connected.
Less than two weeks ago, I visited a Title I school in Woodbridge, Connecticut, Amity Regional High School. The students were in the middle of showing me their projects when President Trump illegally froze federal funding for their technology and for teachers’ pay.
Thankfully, thanks to Democrats’ forceful objections and multiple interventions from federal courts, that freeze was temporarily lifted. But this was just the beginning of a full-scale assault on public education.
Meanwhile President Musk, in his illegal campaign to take over federal agencies created by Congress, has already infiltrated the Department of Education, where he has reportedly accessed personal and sensitive financial information, including for grantees.
So, while we must continue to work towards full year appropriations bills that can pass Congress, we cannot allow this invasion and destruction of our government by heavily-conflicted billionaires to continue.
Government of the people, by the people, for the people, cannot be replaced by government of billionaires, by billionaires, for billionaires.
The world cannot afford the American experiment in self-government, and our separation of powers across three branches of government, to fail.
I implore my colleagues to fight to retain Congress’s appropriations authority over spending, and over the existence of departments and agencies that we created. If it is the will of the people to shrink or eliminate a governmental organization, then it is the prerogative of Congress, and only Congress, to act on it.
Education in this country is in crisis. The Department of Education stands ready to assist state and local education agencies recover from learning loss and achievement gaps, educator shortages, and to help struggling families afford childcare, pre-K, and post-secondary education.
As we will discuss today, community colleges are an irreplaceable source of economic mobility in this country, and so we must learn how to best align these institutions with local workforce needs, and we must implement and stand up programs that serve this need wherever this is a federal role.
What we cannot do and will not do is retreat from our children’s education altogether.
Thank you, and I yield back.
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