News you should know about money and things getting people to work

There is something of a split in this Administration’s approach to workforce spending.

At the agency level, Trump appointees are trying to figure out whatever way they can redecorate and refocus highly targeted workforce dollars toward the Administration’s bigger aims. At the White House budget office, officials appear to be ignoring all that and calling for everything to be fixed with sweet, sweet fire—no matter how unstrategic that may be for the Administration’s policy goals and unlikely in a tightly split Congress.

To catch up, the Trump White House would like to eliminate most American workforce spending and replace it with a much smaller block grant called “Make America Skilled Again.” Trump agency officials have put forward their own version of a block grant in the oft-referenced America’s Talent Strategy workforce blueprint.

The latter doesn’t show up in Sonderling’s written testimony before Senate appropriators last week, but the MASA fire-based policy sure does.

Sonderling’s sales job to the Senate—which I caught up on this week—wasn’t exactly the strongest for MASA, and it reminded me how dang hard it is to sell something when the talking points are underdeveloped and/or not there. He pitched the plan as helping states by not making them worry about quite so much money that does so many things—by giving states less money, which necessarily will result in them being able to do fewer things. (Sonderling also is not two months removed from telling a convention of state workforce leaders that the Administration is not asking them to “do more with less.”)

MASA likely arrived dead on the Hill, where it’s hard to see the plan picking off seven Democrats or keeping the Republican majority together in either chamber. Those Republicans seem less patient these days, and I don’t imagine that will improve.

Among them are Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, who, last I checked, is trailing her Democratic challenger by seven points. Collins is a big fan of Job Corps, a program for young people that the Trump Administration has argued for the elimination of based on questionable data. She noted that the program is struggling to attract students because of worries about future Trump Administration attacks.

“I’m very disappointed that the Department’s 2027 budget once again proposes eliminating Job Corps,” Collins said, arguing DOL’s actions have “distorted” its recent performance data.

Collins had the volume cranked up like someone trying to show their independence from the President, and Sonderling’s talking points didn’t help him much here. Sonderling said DOL wanted to tell more success stories like one Collins told about a Job Corps student, but also thought the block grants would increase those stories… by eliminating the program that led to that success story.

Sonderling seemed a touch flustered by questioning by Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., that pointed out that the Administration is calling for dramatically reducing workforce spending while saying it’s going to get people to fill purported hiring shortages.

“It's not credible to come before this committee and say that you are asking for a 25 percent reduction and you are going to train more workers,” Murphy said. “That’s just not credible.”

Sonderling said that the MASA plan routes money away from “certain programs that aren't effective” and “not training the workers we want.” (Among those programs? The YouthBuild program Sonderling talked up a few months back around some AI training components that… probably won’t actually result in folks training all that much on AI.)

Sen. John Husted, R-Ohio, expected to be in a tight race against former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, also pressed Sonderling on switching to MASA. He talked up his state’s apprenticeship system (in ways very interesting in light of something I flag behind the paywall today) and asking how DOL would do better with less money.

“Why would this be better than the current program that we have?” Husted asked.

Husted poked at Sonderling about what DOL programs spend on apprenticeship now—something Sonderling really didn’t have an answer for. Husted asked him if he felt confident the Administration would hit one million apprentices as promised.

“You have my commitment that I will do everything to continue to promote this to expand the aperture in Registered Apprenticeship to get industries that they thought they couldn’t have Registered Apprenticeship,” said Sonderling, pointing toward the “ADD ALL THE PROGRAMS” approach that corporate leaders seemed skeptical of last week.

One other thing: Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., had a complaint about the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act’s (expensive) performance metrics and how they aren’t really helpful at measuring things that matter. Republicans in the House are probably the strongest and last proponents of those measures, but historically, I haven’t heard a ton of disenchantment with those measures from Senate Republicans. That’s interesting.