From time to time, we receive inquiries about various federal workforce training programs that are established under the federal Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA). WIOA was enacted in 2014 with strong bipartisan support in an effort to significantly consolidate and streamline the federal job training infrastructure, which at the time had dozens of duplicative (and costly) federal job training programs.
As is the case with many other federal laws that provide for government spending, WIOA must be “reauthorized” on a periodic basis. Indeed, the current authorization for WIOA technically expired at the end of fiscal year (FY) 2020, but Congress has continued to fund these programs one year at a time through the annual appropriations process while it wrestles with whether and how to revise WIOA.
Rather than seeking compromise, earlier this year the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives in a strictly partisan vote approved legislation (H.R. 7309) to overhaul WIOA that had the strong endorsement of organized labor. Since then, however, it’s become increasingly clear that the closely divided U.S. Senate has no appetite for taking up the bill, meaning that for the upcoming FY 2023 WIOA’s programs will be funded through the annual appropriations process.
Members of the Center for Workplace Compliance (CWC) can read more here.