House Majority Leader Cantor Visits Community College

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor visited Northern Virginia Community College’s Alexandria campus Thursday to tour the college’s automotive workshop and highlight the importance of the Supporting Knowledge & Investing in Lifelong Skills (SKILLS) Act, which aims to modernize and reform federal workforce development programs.

Cantor, a Republican from Virginia, was joined by Education and the Workforce Chairman John Kline, R-Minn.; Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C.; Rep. Susan Brooks, R-Ind.; college President Robert Templin Jr.; and Associate Vice President for Workforce Development Lorinzo Foxworth.

Cantor made the following remarks:

“I am delighted to be here at Northern Virginia Community College. I want to thank president Templin and his team for allowing us to be here and taking us on a tour of the workshop today to demonstrate the good work that Northern Virginia Community College is doing to ready the workforce for the job availability that is out there.

“You can see, we are here with some leaders in Congress on the question of education and workforce. Chairman Kline and his committee have been focused on the question of how we marry up the workforce with the available jobs that are out there. As the president just indicated, by 2020 there will be 600,000 job openings in Northern Virginia alone indicating there is a need for skills training so we can put people back to work.

“Virginia Foxx, congresswoman from North Carolina, has championed the bill called the SKILLS Act. This is a bill that tries to do something to take the federal workforce development system, form the chart on your right to the chart on your left. You can see, the maze on the chart on the right is very confusing. We’re trying to streamline things and make it so people who are out of work, desirous of changing a career and wanting to access some of these jobs that need technical training, can do so. That is plain and simple the goal.

“This is a good government bill. It has been recommended by the Government Accountability Office to try and unravel the complicated and overlapping programs that exist in the federal system. Again, I am delighted to be here and I want to thank Northern Virginia Community College for the great work it does in this region.”