Ohio’s Republican Senator was on Meet the Press Sunday morning to talk about working with President Biden on the proposed two trillion-dollar infrastructure plan.
Rob Portman says infrastructure has always been a bipartisan issue and sees a better opportunity for Republicans to work the White House on this bill, than during the last COVID-19 relief package which was pushed through by the Democrats. Infrastructure is just a small part of the bill. Other parts include free tuition for two years at a community college. Portman says he would like to see some of those federal dollars used to train workers for the jobs that are in demand right now.
“The opportunity for us to allow people to get a relatively short-term training session to get an industry-recognized certificate in things like welding or machining or coding on the IT sector or hospital techs. Those are the jobs we really need right now, these middle-skills jobs. And so, I would make more of an emphasis on that because that's actually the reality out there, is that we have a lot of jobs going unfilled. There's something like 500,000 jobs in manufacturing right now being offered and not filled. And one of the reasons is this skills gap. So, let's close the skills gap. To me, that would be the most effective way to use that money.”
Portman says more talks will continue this week with the White House to continue to work on an agreement with this proposal.
