(Washington, D.C.)  The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste, Americans for Tax Reform, and the National Taxpayers Union sent the following letter to the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education in support of the Labor Department’s efforts to reign in wasteful spending:

As you mark up the FY 2005 Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations bill, we ask, on behalf of the millions of members and supporters of our respective organizations that you support the Labor Department’s efforts to rein in wasteful government spending.  Such efforts include: not permitting automatic, yearly funded taxpayer-financed grants to be used to support the internal operations of labor unions, building union infrastructure, funding union conferences, or supporting poor performing union training programs.

The Working for America Institute (WAI) is an AFL-CIO sponsored non-profit alliance charged with the mission of “creating good jobs and building strong communities.”  Although this would appear to be a worthy goal, it has come to our attention that the WAI has received grants from the Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration (ETA) under the 1998 Workforce Investment Act, and has used these funds to train labor representatives in duties such as how to participate in or serve on local Workforce Investment Boards.

Another AFL-CIO organization, the Appalachian Council, is supposed to provide job training for young men and women in a variety of vocational fields.  It currently receives annual funding of $3.9 million per year.  Between July 1998 and March 2004 the Appalachian Council performed at below the average for vocational indicators, resulting in periodic closing of programs.  For example, in fiscal year 1999, full-time placements were at 70 percent, compared to 91 percent for all other national training contractors.  Vocational completion between 2003-2004 was at 69 percent compared to 81 percent for all other national training contractors.  Between July 1998 and March 2004 total placement of registered apprenticeships by the Appalachian Council was at 7.6 percent compared to 17.5 percent for all other sole-source national training centers.

With the deficit at a record $470 billion, our organizations would prefer that all these grants were eliminated but at the very least taxpayers expect ETA grants to only be used to train citizens in a trade or finding new employment.  All grants for job-training activities should be put out to bid to assure that these grants are open to all job-training organizations.  These organizations should show strong concrete results of putting people back to work in productive jobs.  Congress needs to adopt the Department of Labor’s proposals to end the waste of tax dollars.

The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste is the lobbying arm of Citizens Against Government Waste, the nation's largest nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.