Related Items Full Coverage: White House Releases New Budget

By Sara Hebel
LEGI-SLATE News Service
Monday, Feb. 2, 1998

President Clinton's $38.1 billion Department of Labor budget for the 1999 fiscal year calls for expanded youth job training, protections against child labor abuses, and efforts to bolster state unemployment insurance funds.

Training: The budget includes $2.6 billion for job training of disadvantaged youth, an increase of $311 million over the current budget. The Job Corps, which is popular with many Republicans, would receive an increase of $61.4 million to support creation of five new centers by the end of the 1999 budget year. The budget also calls for creation of 530,000 summer jobs for youths in urban and rural low-income areas. In addition, adult training grants under the Job Training Partnership Act would be increased by $45 million, boosting the program to $1 billion in training assistance to support 401,100 trainees.

Unemployment: The economy may be roaring now, but the budget makes contingency plans for an unemployment insurance "safety net" to protect workers and state insurance funds in the event of a recession. The plan calls for legislation to broaden eligibility for part-time workers and would allocate $91 million to improve efficiency of state unemployment insurance programs.

Child Labor: The budget proposal includes $89 million, an $86 million increase, for an initiative to fight abusive child labor practices, which Clinton, in his State of the Union address, called the "most intolerable labor practice of all."

The proposal would include a $27 million increase, from the $3 million spent last year, in the U.S. contribution to the International Programme for the Elimination of Child Labour to support its efforts aimed at reducing forced or indentured work, work performed by very young children and child labor in hazardous occupations.

It also would increase by $50 million last year's $312.5 million budget for the Migrant Education Program, which provides special services to migrant children. The budget also would provide $5 million for a migrant youth job training demonstration program.

Finally, the budget would provide $4 million for the Labor Department to hire 36 more investigators to increase the enforcement of child labor laws in agricultural activities.