My beat as the Washington correspondent for Workforce Management is pretty broad. I define it as legislation, regulations and court rulings that affect employers. On most days, there are a couple news events that are part of my portfolio.

Much of the time, I have to do triage, ignoring some potential news while turning my focus to another promising area. One way that I’ve done this at the committee level is by concentrating on the “labor” portion of the House and Senate panels that oversee labor and education policy.

But a recent bill is causing me to rethink my approach. When it comes to workforce preparation, employers increasingly are just as concerned about the K-12 level as they are about college education and incumbent-worker training.

Congress and the Obama administration have emphasized this point in a bill that the House approved September 17, the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act. It would overhaul the college student loan system while instituting other changes, including reform of community colleges and early childhood education programs.

In a news conference urging passage of the bill, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said that education and, in effect, workforce preparation has to be viewed holistically. In his view, it’s a seamless path from Head Start to K-12 to college.

“We have to address these together,” Duncan said.

If a student stumbles at the beginning of his or her educational journey, it’s tough to catch up, according to one House leader.

“Many of them don’t recover in terms of their ability to prosper in our economy, in our democracy,” said Rep. George Miller, D-California and chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee.

Education ties in directly with innovation—the holy grail for business. Companies that come up with killer apps—or products and services—are the ones that will prevail in the global market.

“We know that the nations that out-educate us today will out-compete us tomorrow,” said President Barack Obama in a September 21 speech about innovation. “The ability of new industries to thrive depends on workers with the knowledge and the know-how to contribute in those fields. Unfortunately, today, our primary and secondary schools continue to trail many of our competitors, especially in the key areas of math and science.”

The student aid bill has its detractors. Republicans argue that it is another example of the government takeover of the economy orchestrated by Democrats—this time in the student loan sector. Banks and other financial institutions are resisting the measure because it largely eliminates their role in education lending.

But most members of the business community can get behind other dimensions of the bill, including the community college reforms and the focus on early childhood education.

After a February speech in Washington, Intel president and CEO Paul Otellini told reporters that the U.S. had to become a “high-knowledge industry economy.”

For instance, he sees biotechnology as a big part of America’s future. That sector depends on a steady supply of scientists and engineers.

“The biggest threat is if the educational system erodes the ability to [create] those jobs here,” Otellini said. He advocated a broad, bottom-up approach, starting with K-12.

It’s a message that Congress is hearing.

Not much was accomplished legislatively during the first day of the Senate Finance Committee’s formal work on a health care reform bill on Tuesday, September 22. But by the late afternoon, the political fault lines were clear.

Sen. Max Baucus, D-Montana and chairman of the panel, really has only one hope for securing a Republican vote. Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, seemed to have an open mind about the $774 billion bill. Keeping Snowe on board, however, might require patience from Democrats who are champing at the bit to get to the legislating—or voting—on health care reform.

Snowe made clear in her opening statement that one of her priorities is ensuring that the measure will not increase the burgeoning federal deficit. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the original Baucus bill, introduced on September 16, would reduce the deficit by $49 billion over 10 years.

But during the past week, Baucus has modified his original “mark” to accommodate concerns from his Democratic colleagues. The bill doesn’t include a government-run public insurance option or an employer mandate—two policies that congressional liberals cherish. Some Democratic senators worry that the Baucus bill would impose too high a premium burden on middle-income individuals and families.

The chairman revised the underlying legislation to increase the health care tax credit for purchasing coverage on a national health insurance exchange; lowered the “affordability” test for employer-sponsored insurance to 10 percent of an employee’s income from 13 percent; reduced the penalty imposed on people who don’t buy health insurance; and increased the threshold for the excise tax on high-cost insurance plans.

Baucus intends to “pay” for these changes out of the bill’s $49 billion surplus. But they are just the beginning of the revisions to the bill. Over the next few days, the committee has to wade through more than 500 amendments.

The final product may have a different price tag, if not a completely different look, from the original. Snowe wants to know exactly what Congress is paying for before voting the bill out of the committee.

“I hope we will have the opportunity to review the final mark and revised CBO estimates on the bill as amended—before we move to any final vote,” she said. “We simply cannot address one-sixth of our economy, and a matter of such personal and financial significance to every American, on a legislative fast track.”

President Barack Obama also has the deficit on his mind. In his September 9 address to Congress, he guaranteed that the final health care reform effort will not add a “dime” to the federal deficit.

But Obama and Democratic leaders—as well as Baucus—are eager to get to a vote by the full Senate. That can only occur after the Finance panel approves its bill and the measure is merged with a bill approved over the summer by the Senate health committee. Baucus wants to move the process along by finishing the Finance markup this week.

The timeline is causing Republicans other than Snowe to throw in the towel. Snowe and Sens. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Mike Enzi, R-Wyoming, were members of the “Gang of Six” who had been negotiating the bill with Baucus for months.

But Grassley is not satisfied with the outcome so far.

“That artificial deadline pushed us aside and put an end to that bipartisan work before it could produce a bipartisan bill,” he said. “It seems that the White House and the leadership were never really going to give it time to do it right.”

That timetable for the Finance bill could be slowed, however, by the CBO. Director Douglas Elmendorf testified at the September 22 markup that the agency requires at least several days, perhaps as much as two weeks, to determine the effect of hundreds of amendments on the cost of the bill.

That answer didn’t sit well with Baucus, who displays equanimity even in tense circumstance. But Elmendorf’s answers caused him to wince, even growl slightly.

“We’ll figure a way out of this box,” Baucus said.

But staying inside the box may be the only way to placate Snowe. So far in Obama’s “post-partisan” Washington, bipartisanship means getting Democrats and Snowe to back a bill. Democrats may have to wait for her to get the answer she wants about the cost of the health care bill.
 

In the aftermath of President Barack Obama’s health care reform address to a joint session of Congress on September 9, much of the focus has been on how often and in what venue Rep. Joe Wilson will apologize for his outburst.

As everyone knows by now, the South Carolina Republican violated Capitol Hill decorum by shouting, “You lie!” to Obama when the president spoke about health care and illegal immigrants.

But if I were in the audience, I would have been inspired to make an extemporaneous comment at a different point in the speech. I would have had to bite my tongue when the president linked Sen. Edward Kennedy’s legacy to health care reform.

Obama was right to extol the virtues of Kennedy’s ability to reach across the aisle to secure legislative accomplishments. He scanned the audience and mentioned one by one some of the Republicans who teamed up with Kennedy over his illustrious Senate career: Orrin Hatch on children’s health insurance; John McCain on the patients’ bill of rights; Charles Grassley on children with disabilities.

If I had enough time before security removed me, I might have said:

“Sir, you just mentioned more Republicans than are likely right now to vote for the Senate version of health care reform. Are you going to stake your presidency on a bill that draws only one GOP senator or are you going to demand of your Democratic friends that they come up with a bill that attracts 15 or more?”

The Senate Finance Committee remains the last best hope of bipartisanship on health care reform. Three Democrats and three Republicans, led by Chairman Max Baucus, D-Montana, have been working for months on a bill. A framework for the legislation has been released and a formal bill will be introduced this week, perhaps as soon as Tuesday, September 15.

Hours before the president spoke September 9, Baucus announced that he will move forward with a markup during the week of September 21 with or without Republicans on board. But Baucus will continue to try to persuade Republican colleagues as the committee begins voting on the bill.

It is the measure that is viewed most favorably by the business community, which is a good harbinger for attracting Republican support, because it lacks an employer mandate. Another characteristic that could garner GOP interest is that it leaves out a public health insurance option. The four other health care bills—three in the House and another in the Senate—include an employer mandate and the public option.

In his appearance before Congress, Obama stressed that he wants a health care bill completed this year. That means that the House and Senate have to each pass a measure, conduct conference negotiations and pass a final bill in a matter of weeks.

That will provide plenty of opportunities for Obama to demonstrate that he can say “no” to House Democratic leadership and organized labor, each of which has indicated that the public option must be part of a health care bill.

In an effort to please as many Democratic constituencies as possible, the Senate may opt to pass some parts of health care reform with 60 votes, the number required to overcome a filibuster, and other elements with only 51 through a complicated parliamentary maneuver called reconciliation.

Taking that path is sure to spark political fireworks.

Health care reform “should be done in a bipartisan fashion and not through procedural gimmicks or short cuts,” said Paul Dennett, senior vice president for health care reform at the American Benefits Council.

With the current Senate makeup of 59 Democrats—Kennedy’s seat will remain open perhaps until January—the majority party needs to attract at least one Republican to get health care reform approved under normal rules.

Being satisfied with only one GOP vote presents political risks. Former Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole said American voters are smart enough to know when a majority party is strong-arming legislation through Congress.

But Dole also said that if Republicans sit out health care reform, they will not be able to retake Congress in the 2010 elections.

“We’re not going to do it unless we have something to show for [health care reform],” he told a September 9 forum at the Newseum in Washington sponsored by the Bipartisan Policy Center and Better Health Care Together. “The American people are going to wonder: What were the Republicans for?”

Dole knows better than anyone how Washington works. Democrats and Republicans should heed his advice that both parties need to be on board for health care reform.

 August is a month of respite for Washington. Endless political fights continue but the battlefield moves back to the states and districts of members of Congress.

The traffic and decibel level ease in the capital as people take their summer vacations. The quirk in the calendar this year extended the August congressional recess into the first days of September.

But the Workforce Management beat was busy this week. Organizations on the left and right—the AFL-CIO and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, respectively—hosted Labor Day briefings. Individual experts also weighed in on the state of the U.S. employment market.

In the midst of the predictable rhetorical tussle over the Employee Free Choice Act, the bill that would make it easier for workers to form unions, there was a surprising moment of convergence between labor-leaning representatives and those who favor management.

It was on a topic that concerns both sides: How to ease worker anxiety about the wrenching changes wrought by global economic competition. They agreed that one answer is to make sure that workers receive their fair share of the productivity gains they produce for their employers.

Productivity is profit. If a company makes better products or delivers better service quicker and more cheaply than its competitors, it will win market share.

But over the last several years, the people who have reaped the vast majority of the gains are executives and shareholders. Wage disparity between the top of corporations and the middle and bottom is accelerating. The resentment of middle-class workers—and voters—has manifested itself in political pressure on Congress to rein in executive pay.

The answer from organized labor is to give workers more leverage through unionization.

“The fastest, the surest and the most effective mechanism for raising workers’ wages is the collective bargaining process,” said Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO secretary treasurer, in a speech at the Center for American Progress in Washington on August 31. “Increasing productivity only raises wages when workers have bargaining power. Take bargaining power out of the equation and you’ll still generate wealth—but it won’t get into the hands of the people who created it.”

Trumka’s answer to this dilemma—passage of EFCA—is anathema to the business community. But he also is using this argument in part to appeal to younger workers he is trying to bring into the labor movement. They are the ones who are the most technologically savvy and will deliver many of the productivity advances that corporations seek.

On September 2, I attended a book launch at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Grant Aldonas, former undersecretary of commerce for international trade, introduced Globalization and the American Worker: Negotiating a New Social Contract.

Aldonas, principal managing director of the consulting firm Split Rock International and a veteran of Republican administrations, spent part of his presentation focusing not on social contracts writ large but on labor contracts.

He made a similar argument to Trumka’s. Look at Page 18 of his PowerPoint. Aldonas calls for “aligning the interests of workers with the long-term interests of their firms” through “contracts that ensure that workers profit directly from the productivity gains they create.”

Aldonas criticized EFCA as misguided. But he did not trash unions in general.

He asserted that the only way for workers to achieve a higher standard of living is through acquiring the skills demanded in the global economy.

One of the best providers of such training in Aldonas’ view is unions. “Labor makes a much more profound investment in human capital than people realize,” he said. “We ought to honor that.”

Almost everyone agrees on the need to bolster education and training. Business and labor should step away from the battle over EFCA long enough to figure out how they can collaborate to strengthen the U.S. workforce.