American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009

Rep. Maxine Waters [D-CA]: Mr. Chairman and Members, this is not a complicated amendment. It simply clarifies that funds provided for job training in division A of this bill can be used for programs in division B, in particular, for broadband communications deployment. What are we talking about? We are talking about broadband infrastructure. The broadband package authorizes the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, a part of the Commerce Department, to distribute $2.825 billion for wireless and wireline broadband through a grant program.

This is extremely important. Here we are in 2009. There are many communities throughout this country that are simply underserved. They do not have broadband. We are going to take this opportunity to repair or to build out the broadband infrastructure. We're going to take this opportunity to bring these communities up to date so that there can be more jobs, so that businesses can be supported, and so that families can have access to the kind of technology that will help them pursue jobs and careers and for students to have access to the kind of technology that will help them to communicate with other students and with their teachers, et cetera, et cetera. This is very important.

Now, the job training in this bill is in one section, and of course, broadband infrastructure is described in another section. I simply allow the job training resources to be used on broadband infrastructure. Someone has asked, does this mean that you're taking all of the money in job training for broadband? No. This simply means that we make the opportunity available for this money to be used for broadband infrastructure. Where did I get this idea? I was fortunate enough to witness what could be done in the expansion of broadband opportunities. In part of my district, we ended up with a training class at one of our schools for the laying of fiberoptic. And the young people who took advantage of this opportunity ended up getting trained. They got good jobs. Many of them moved into other communities. They bought homes. These are not simply dead-end jobs. These are careers that can be developed with this kind of training. We know that there is job training and there is job training. There is some of this job training that is kind of classroom oriented. There are some jobs that are so-called trained for that don't really exist.

But this is real. We know that the telecommunications industry must keep up with the expansion. We know that they do some training. We know that they did more training in the past. But to the degree that we can help get this training done, we can create jobs, expand broadband opportunities and truly create these careers.

So, I'm very pleased that approximately $1 billion would go to deployment of wireless service, 25 percent to wireless voice service in underserved areas and 75 percent to advance wireless broadband in underserved areas. Approximately $1.825 billion would go to the deployment of broadband via fiber or other wires, 25 percent to basic broadband in unserved areas, and 75 percent to advance broadband in underserved areas. This is a one-time opportunity to get a lot of young people trained. It is not enough to say that we're going to do job training that may lead to simply some jobs for a short period of time. Some of those jobs may be in construction. But they will only last for as long as the project will last. Some of those jobs that we hope to come on line are not going to come on as quickly as we would like them to. But these opportunities are waiting. These opportunities are waiting, and the telecommunications companies and the contractors who work with them can get this job training up and going immediately. And it's not a long time. In the training that I witnessed for fiber optics, we had people on the job within 3 to 4 months.

I would ask support for this amendment.

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