Speaker Ryan: Skills for a 21st-Century Workforce Cap GOPs Better Way

Speaker Paul Ryan  Its no secret that being speaker of the House comes with its challenges. Recently however I had the kind of day that makes it all worth it. You may not have heard about this. It didnt get splashy headlines or go viral or anything like that. To little fanfare the peoples House passed major legislation to overhaul the countrys career and technical education system. It is now the law of the land. This is one of those unglamorous reforms that actually will do a great deal to improve peoples lives. Its something we have been working on for years. Right now many workers face real hurdles when it comes to acquiring the skills they need to get a good job. The reality is our education system has failed to keep pace with the modern economy. Weve been using 20th-century tools to address 21st-century needs. This skills gap is one reason why there is now a record number of job openings in Americamore than 6.7 million. In fact in this booming economy we have more job openings than we do people looking for work. This new law will help us close this gap. Now students and workers will have a clearer path to getting the right skills and the right training including more partnerships between local schools and businesses. These changes will make it easier for people trying to earn a good living and get on the path to a great career. Workforce development is the last plank of House Republicans Better Way agenda that we began implementing at the start of 2017. At its heart was a plan to fix our tax code another big change we finally got through after years if not decades of work. Tax reform has defied the cynics leading to an economic renaissance. After years of stagnation our economy is growing at its fastest rate in four years. Worker pay and benefits are rising at their fastest rate in 10 years. Unemployment is near its lowest level in decades. To bolster our national security our agenda called for rebuilding Americas military. To address a severe readiness crisiswhich has cost us the lives of service members through training accidents and incidentswe passed the biggest increase in defense funding in 15 years. We are increasing the size of our armed forces upgrading equipment and giving our service members their biggest pay raise in nearly a decade. Think about all the scandals and horrifying stories out of the Department of Veterans Affairs in recent years. We are finally restoring real accountability at the VA so our veterans can get the attention and treatment they deserve. And new reforms through the VA Mission Act will help ensure veterans receive timely care which is the agencys core mission. We are tackling the chronic problems our communities face. Chances are you or someone you know has been affected by opioid addiction. The House recently passed sweeping legislation to combat the opioid epidemic amounting to the largest congressional effort against a single drug in history. We have strengthened barriers to prevent opioids from making it through our borders and we are targeting deadly synthetic drugs. The threat posed by transnational gangs like MS-13 is a consistent focus of ours. We recently passed a law authored by Rep. Barbara Comstock R-Va. to free up much-needed resources for law enforcement through the Project SAFE grant program. There is still more to do of course. We continue to build on regulatory reforms to help our smaller banks and businesses. We need to do more to help people get off the sidelines and into the workforce. This kind of progress doesnt always make the cut on cable news but we are delivering on a bold agenda. We have taken on some big challenges and Americans are better off now. At its core this isnt a story about passing bills into law. It is about the great resilience of the American people and what we can achieve when we raise our sights. This is a story about the days that make all the challenges worthwhile.