Vision 2020 chair supports Job Corps

by Bill Ecret & Chairman
| February 25, 2011 5:00 AM

GUEST EDITORIAL

MOSES LAKE - I am writing to call attention to and oppose the cuts to the federal Job Corps program introduced by House Appropriations Chairman Harold Rogers in H.R.1. Job Corps is the premier federal dropout recovery program, which provides education and training to help young people learn specific skills to develop a career, earn a high school diploma or GED, and find and keep a good job.

It's already hard enough to find a job in this economy, but imagine what it is like for a high school dropout without any job skills to speak of. Now is the wrong time to be slashing the budget for the Job Corps program, which provides those skills. For every 1.2 million teenage dropouts each year, the long term cost to the American taxpayer is $469,200, to cover the decreased earnings, lost tax revenues, public health care expenses, crime related costs and increased welfare benefits. Over the next decade, American taxpayers will have to pay over $3 trillion to cover these costs and that does not factor in the personal costs to our youth. Job Corps only costs $26,000 per student. So we can invest in job skills training now, or pay nearly 20 times the cost of that training in welfare, public financed health care, and prison later. Cutting Job Corps makes no fiscal sense whatsoever. Taxpayers should be outraged at the proposal to cut this vital program.

In H.R.1 $991 million would be slashed from Job Corps. Every state will suffer private sector job losses and a loss of local economic activity if this proposal is enacted. The impacts of this proposal would be catastrophic to local communities across the nation, to thousands of young Americans desperately in need of the program's services, and to the American economy.

At Columbia Basin Job Corps CCC, students receive the skills needed to succeed in today's workforce, at no cost to them or their families. Participants in the program live on campus in Moses Lake, Washington while receiving training in trade fields including: Carpentry, Cement Masonry, computer Networking/Cisco, Culinary Arts, Facilities Maintenance, Nurse Assistant/Home Health Aide, Office Administration, Painting, Pharmacy Technician, Plastering, and Welding & ACT-Advanced Training College Program.

The benefits that the City of Moses Lake and others in Grant County have received from Columbia Basin Job Corps CCC are and continue to be astonishing. Over 1900 hours have been donated to building a house for Habitat for Humanity of Greater Moses Lake. The Carpenters also spent 890 hours at the Youth Dynamics Stonewater Ranch hanging drywall for a new adventure camp at Lake Wenatchee. All totaled in 2009 alone, the Carpentry class spent 8,265 hours on projects that benefited our community. Total cost savings, $115,710.

The Cement Masons spent over 1000 hours creating a basketball court in the Larson housing Area of Moses Lake and also worked at removing a large portion of sidewalk in the receiving dock area on center to ease the turn into the dock for large trucks. Total cost savings on projects, again in 2009 alone $61,307.

The Plastering CTT program completed two major center renovations in PY 2009. Total cost savings on the Plastering projects in PY 2009, $95,572.

Painting Projects in PY 2009 saved $108,030.

Cost savings by students in a USDA Forest Service project $6,080.

Columbia Basin Job Corps CCC volunteers more than any other organization in our community The Culinary Art students assist the dining hall staff in preparing meals for the nearly 300 Columbia Basin Job Corps CCC students each day. Annually that equates to over 14,000 the Culinary Art Students work on the main floor of the center dining hall in addition to the classroom training they receive. Grant County Family Services also operates a Headstart Program and 633 hours of time was donated by Culinary Arts students preparing lunch for the preschoolers. Culinary Arts students learned to fillet and clean donated trout for the local Moses Lake Food Bank. Almost 2000 pounds of fish fillets filled the food bank freezers at the end of the day.

I have not even touched the surface of how this one organization has helped our community or how the proposal by some to eliminate the program altogether would hurt thousands in our community and others nationwide. Cutting Job Corps by $991 million will cost the nation:

23,784 jobs in communities in every state, the vast majority of which are private sector jobs

$1.89 billion in lost local economic activity.

Over 40,000 at risk young Americans who will be turned away from Job Corps costing the American government and economy as much as $19 billion over the course of their lifetimes.

The closure of 85 Job Corps centers that serve as economic centers in communities such as Moses Lake across the nation.

In closing, the "Friends of the Job Corps Caucus" in Congress would benefit by additional members especially by our local representatives.

We are going to fight to keep the Job Corps in place and Vision 2020 hopes that others do as well, and realize just how life changing Job Corps can be.