Senator Hatch Op-Ed April 12, 2013: Utah Prepares for Increasing Demand of Highly-Trained Workforce

The world of education, training and technology is constantly evolving, and we’ve all seen the effects of that first hand. When I was first sworn in as a U.S. Senator, only 26 percent of American middle-class workers had any kind of post high school training or education. In those days, it was easier for individuals to find long-term jobs, settle into careers, and support their families with relatively less training or education compared to today.

Fast forward to today. Due largely to giant leaps in technology and increased globalization and trade, studies estimate that nearly 60 percent of all jobs today require training or education beyond high school, and that statistic continues to climb. And, not only is it more difficult to find a job without post-high school education, but statistics show that the wage gap has nearly doubled between individuals who have bachelor’s degrees and those with a high school diploma.

American workers can compete with anyone, but in order for our country to remain competitive on a global scale and for workers to receive the compensation needed to support themselves and their families, we have work to do in the world of training, education and technology, both on the state and federal level.

I’ve written before about legislation I introduced in the U.S. Senate – the Immigration Innovation Act – which uses some of the funds from the restructuring of fees for immigrant visas to implement a grant program administered by Utah and states across the country to promote STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education and worker retraining.

And on the state level, Governor Herbert and the Utah State Legislature are implementing the PACE initiative, which strives to increase the percentage of Utah’s adult workforce holding post-secondary degrees from the current 43 percent to  66 percent by 2020. The PACE plan, which stands for pace young learners, access for all students, complete certificates and degrees and economic success, is ambitious and detailed, outlining specific goals to improve education in Utah to reach the goal of an educated taskforce by 2020. Major goals and plans of the PACE initiative include:

• Increasing funding for students and teachers
• Establishing clear guidelines and standards to improve STEM education for all students
• Providing technology for 21^st century learning
• Better preparing students for college entrance exams
• Investing in scholarships and expanded programming and buildings on campuses
• Investing in the U of U medical school to produce 20 more doctors per year

The PACE plan takes some strong steps forward in education reform, and makes those changes where I’ve always felt education standards should be set – at the state level, closest to teachers and students. I look forward to working with our state leaders to increase post-high school degrees and certificates received in the coming years. This will ensure that Utah remains at the top of places to do business, and Utahns continue to lead the way in a global economy.

Senator Hatch Op-Ed April 5, 2013: High Skilled Immigration Reform Needed Now

Each year, thousands of international students study in U.S. schools and universities, some right here in Utah. Many prove themselves among the best and brightest in their programs, demonstrating great innovation and talent, and have hopes of entering our nation’s workforce following graduation, which would help boost our economy. Our country also has a growing demand for high-skilled workers, and many of these international students have the training, skills and drive to fill gaps in highly specialized areas of employment, especially the high-tech industry.

Current U.S. Immigration law limits the quantity of employment-based nonimmigrant (H-1B) visas to 65,000 total foreigners with bachelor’s degrees, with an additional 20,000 visas for foreign nationals with advanced degrees from U.S. universities. However, as the economy continues to improve and more companies are seeking skilled employees to expand their businesses, the national H-1B visa cap has already been reached for this year.

What does that mean? It means that U.S. companies struggling to find candidates with the talent and skills necessary to support their businesses, and it also sends American-trained talent and innovation to other countries and nations- our business competitors- across the globe.

This is why I introduced the Immigration Innovation (I2) Act earlier this year. This bipartisan legislation will bring long-overdue reforms to the nation’s immigration laws for high-skilled workers. The bill focuses on three main areas vital to ensuring the United States can maintain its competitiveness in the global economy:

1)      The quantity of employment-based nonimmigrant visas (H-1B visas), allowing for their growth depending on the demands of the economy while making reforms to protect workers.

2)      Increased access to green cards for high-skilled workers by expanding the exemptions and eliminating the annual per country limits for employment based green cards.

3)      Reforming the fees on H-1B and green cards so those fees can be used to promote American worker retraining and education.

Since the bill’s introduction in January, it has received wide-spread bipartisan support from many of my colleagues in the Senate, as well as strong support from many leaders in the high-tech industry, including Facebook, Microsoft, Intel, HP, and others. They understand that a more high-skilled workforce means they can create more jobs and help expand their business, which in turn means a strong American economy.

Reforming the high-skilled component of our immigration system is necessary in order for the United States to keep up with our foreign competitors in a global economy. Reform in this area would boost our economy and create good-paying jobs here in the U.S. The Immigration Innovation Act takes a number of needed steps to accomplish this goal.

Senator Hatch Op-Ed March 22, 2013: Utah Easter Traditions Celebrate Hope and Newness of Life

Utah Easter Traditions Celebrate Hope and Newness of Life

In Utah, we can almost always count on the month of March “coming in like a lion.” This year brought no surprises, and the biting cold and snow storms kept us shoveling walks and driveways well through the month.

But although the long Utah winters can prove both persistent and relentless, the early sight of a tenacious blooming daffodil or the slow trickle of melting snow and ice brings hope and excitement for the coming spring and summer to children and adults alike. And nothing embodies the hope, excitement and joy of spring quite like the celebration of Easter.

As Christians, we celebrate Easter to commemorate the Resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. But as individuals, each can appreciate and enjoy this annual celebration of newness, life and joy.

Numerous traditions mark the celebration of Easter, with many crossing centuries, languages, and countries. But no Easter tradition is quite as iconic and beloved as the tradition of the Easter Egg. Today, the Easter Egg is the symbol of the season, but the custom dates back to ancient times as a symbol of fertility and rebirth for pagans celebrating the spring Equinox.

Later, early Christians stained eggs red, symbolizing the blood shed by Jesus Christ. Christian churches throughout the world continued the tradition and also saw eggs as a symbol of the resurrection; seemingly dead and lifeless, but opening to reveal new life and hope.

Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, Russia, Ukraine and other central European countries are famous for their intricate and beautifully decorated eggs, including the famous Faberge eggs, another popular and widely accepted symbol of newness and life. Other countries boast rituals, dances, games, or even village plays centered on the Easter egg with similar themes and symbolism. One game, egg rolling, was played in the United Kingdom to symbolize the rolling away of the stone from Jesus’ tomb before the resurrection. This tradition was continued by settlers in the New World and is still played each Easter on the White House lawn.

However we each choose to celebrate Easter I hope the thawing of snow, warm sunshine and the symbols of new life which surround us will bring us hope and joy. As March “goes out like a lamb,” I look forward to a renewal of hope and optimism. Despite the challenges we face as individuals or as a nation, I believe there is much to be optimistic about. As Floyd W. Tomkins, a Christian author, wrote, “Let the resurrection joy lift us from loneliness, weakness, and despair to strength, beauty, and happiness.”

Elaine and I wish you and your loved ones a very happy Easter season.

Senator Hatch Op-Ed March 15, 2013: Maintaining the Heritage of Rural Utah

As a father, grandfather, and great grandfather, I understand the desire to create and maintain a lasting legacy for our children and grandchildren. It is innate human nature to hope that our way of life and the things we value and love be preserved for future generations to enjoy.

For many in Utah, living a rural way of life and maintaining family land for historic uses is a crucial part of the legacy they hope to leave for posterity. But over the last ten years, as Utah has become one of the fastest growing states in the country, pressure has also grown for farmers, ranchers and landowners to sell or develop valuable family land. This is why I and my colleague Max Baucus (D-Mont.) introduced the Rural Heritage Conservation Extension Act, which permanently extends tax relief for landowners who choose to sell or donate their rural lands for conservation. We understand the great heritage of ranchers, farmers and landowners in America, and this Act will enable them to continue their rural way of life for generations to come.

Senator Baucus and I have proposed the permanent extension of this bill with the landowners of Utah and Montana in mind. This common sense legislation is a win-win for rural America for a number of reasons. It allows all taxpayers to deduct up to 50 percent of their adjusted gross income (AGI) for qualified donations of conservation easements. Any unused deduction can be carried forward for up to 15 years. The bill further benefits farmers and ranchers by allowing them to deduct up to 100 percent of their AGI for donations of conservation easements. In the years since this bill has been passed into law, it has already benefited many Utah families who hope to maintain a legacy of rural living for their children and grandchildren.

I understand and take the responsibility of representing our great state and its citizens very seriously, and I rely on the feedback and recommendations of Utahns most closely connected to the land to guide me as I defend and create legislation with them in mind. I have fostered and maintained a close relationship with representatives from the organizations representing the farmers, ranchers and landowners in Utah and made every effort to listen to the needs of these individuals.

Over the last ten years as Utah has become one of the fastest growing states in the country, pressure on farmers and ranchers to sell or develop their land has increased. This pressure strengthens the need for legislation like the Rural Heritage Conservation Act, so we can enable individuals and families to keep their farms and ranches in the family.  Besides preserving an important aspect of the heritage of the state, maintaining the land for rural purposes also helps protect unique and prime farmlands which provide food security for the nation.

The introduction of the permanent extension of this bill gives me renewed confidence and hope that the heritage of rural Utah will be preserved and continued for future generations to enjoy. If individuals choose, tools and options will continue to be available to keep their children and their children’s children and families on their farms, ranches and rural land for years to come.

Senator Hatch Op-Ed March 8, 2013: Utah's Bilingual Skills Lead the Nation

In a neighborhood in Bountiful, Utah, several typical middle-class families raised their children. Their children played night games on the street in the summer, enjoyed skiing and sledding in the nearby mountains in the winter, and studied at regular public schools. One by one, they grew up, moved away and began families of their own.

But for several of those children, one part of their growing up years was not typical or ordinary. Before beginning college and their careers, they moved to a foreign country, studied and learned a new language, and became immersed in a new culture. And when they returned home to that neighborhood in suburban Utah, they returned a group of young adults who now collectively speak Russian, Ukrainian, Czech, Slovak, Spanish, Portuguese, Tagalog, Ilonggo and Cebuano.

Similar stories could be told about almost any other street or neighborhood in our state. It is simply remarkable that a landlocked state with no seaports within its borders or foreign countries lining its limits can claim that collectively, its residents can speak 90 percent of the world’s written languages.

Besides the obvious increased international awareness and experience it gives its residents, this trait also gives Utah’s economy a valuable boost by opening opportunities and jobs where language skills are needed. As a report from the Economic Development Corporation of Utah (EDC) explains, Utah’s unmatched number of bilingual residents gives its workforce “a rare and unique skill set that no other state in the country can boast.”

Utah’s unparalleled bilingual skills are largely be attributed to the presence of the LDS Church’s Provo Missionary Training Center (MTC), which offers 1,100 instructors who teach one of 48 world languages to 24,000 missionaries annually. In fact, the language training programs at the MTC have become so successful that the National Security Agency (NSA) selected Utah for its language analyst offices, commenting that Utah’s famous facility was a significant factor in its site selection process. 

Many missionaries trained in the MTC return to Utah to work and go to school following their church service, contributing to Utah’s unique university student bodies. According to the EDC report, 77 percent of BYU’s 30,000 students speak a second language and 47 percent have lived outside the U.S. for at least one year. Brigham Young University (BYU) offers studies in 80+ world language courses and 85 percent of seniors reported to the ability to speak a second language. But extensive foreign language skills aren’t limited just to BYU students; the University of Utah also offers studies in 17 different world language courses and over 180 languages are spoken by its students.

In a global economy, it isn’t a surprise that graduates who can boast fluency in foreign languages, especially Spanish, French, Chinese, and even American Sign Language (also taught at the MTC), are more attractive to businesses and organizations looking to hire. In fact, a 2012 National Journal article, “Utah: An Economy Powered by Multilingual Missionaries,” attributed Utah’s low unemployment rate and growing global exports “to a state workforce that can sell goods to foreign countries- in their own languages.” According to the office of Governor Gary Herbert, Utah’s bilingual workforce was influential in persuading American companies with global reach to establish headquarters in Utah. Some of those companies include eBay, IM Flash Technologies, Twitter, Oracle, Goldman Sachs, Adobe, and Procter and Gamble. These organizations have brought thousands of jobs to Utah, and not just for our bilingual residents.

But Utahns’ linguistic abilities are no longer solely attributed to its residents who serve LDS missions. Utah elementary schools have become renowned nationwide for their foreign language immersion programs. About 80 elementary schools across the state are now participating in such programs, which devote half the school day to learning a second language.

Many children are learning Mandarin Chinese or Spanish, but other schools teach Ute, Navajo, Japanese, Russian, Italian, Hebrew and German.

Studies have shown that not only does foreign language training open doors of opportunities for our students, but that there are also other health and academic benefits as well. Recent research has shown that bilingual individuals are more efficient at multitasking, which may actually help delay the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. Utah testing data also shows that students participating in the immersion program also score higher in the core subjects than kids not studying a second language.

I am proud of our state’s progress in providing opportunities for students to learn more about our world and its cultures, and I am proud of the individuals in our state who have brought opportunities to Utah through their multilingual abilities. They are certainly some of our most valuable assets. In the future, I believe that we will only see an increasing need for individuals who can reach across country lines and cross language barriers to create opportunities for growth and progress, and I see Utah leading the way.

Senator Hatch Op-Ed March 1, 2013: Smart Spending Cuts Needed

Mason Cooley, a professor of English at Columbia University, once said, “Procrastination makes easy things hard, and hard things harder.” Solving our nation’s deficit problem is hard, but Washington has made it even more difficult by procrastinating; waiting until the eleventh hour to discuss solutions to avoid the poorly constructed spending cuts – called the sequester – that went into effect March 1.

The sequester is a series of spending reductions that cut $85 billion in government spending this year, with another $1.1 trillion coming over the next decade. These cuts, which represent under two-and-a-half percent of our entire $3.5 trillion annual federal budget, were included in the Budget Control Act; legislation that I opposed and that the President signed into law in August 2011. That legislation capped discretionary spending and created a new Deficit Reduction Committee — commonly referred to as the SuperCommittee — to find an additional $1.2 trillion in budget savings. If the SuperCommittee failed, which it did, then the sequester would take effect.

Our country is $16.6 trillion in debt, so we need to cut spending. But the problem is that the sequester was structured in such a bad way by President Obama that it could provide an unnecessary pain to Americans across the country. My Republican colleagues and I have tried to work with Senate Democrats on common-sense spending cuts so we can get our crippling debt under control in a more responsible manner, but we’ve been met with virtual silence from President Obama and his Capitol Hill allies.

Senate Democrats offered a failed proposal that included tax hikes to replace these cuts, which I opposed – as did several Democrats. I even introduced alternative legislation to change the sequester cuts in a more responsible way.

My proposal included a series of spending reductions that actually cut more spending (more than $142.2 billion - almost $60 billion more than the sequester cuts), but in a much more common sense, reasonable way like freezing federal employees pay, reducing civilian agency’s travel budgets, and reducing government agency’s advertising budgets. It cuts spending by combining federal agencies and consolidating programs. It eliminates funding for public media, and cuts down on wasteful spending in the federal government for administrative costs. However, the Democrat-controlled Senate didn’t even allow a vote on what I proposed.

This is on top of five bipartisan reforms to our nation’s entitlement programs – Medicare and Medicaid – that I put forward earlier this year.  If we are going to confront our debt, we have to look at these programs which are already larger in size than the economies of Italy, Germany, Spain and Great Britain combined. I asked my Democrat colleagues to join me to fix these programs so they aren’t just another broken promise not only to our seniors, but our children and grandchildren as well.  Regrettably to date, not one has stepped forward to work with me to fix these programs that will also simultaneously help bring down our sky-high debt. 

I’m not going to support legislation that requires the American people to give over more of their hard-earned money to Washington. We must cut spending if we want to get out of the red and pay off our nation’s debt.

Utahns deserve a responsible government, one capable of creating and balancing a budget and willing to face, rather than procrastinate, making of difficult decisions that will strengthen our nation for future generations.

Senator Hatch Op-Ed February 26, 2013: President Obama's sequester the wrong approach

In less than a week, indiscriminate spending cuts are due to hit our federal budget. Now, as someone who’s fought for years to cut spending in Washington, this should be a good thing. Unfortunately, given the way the president structured these spending cuts, they will disproportionately hit our armed forces that are at work defending our nation.

These spending cuts — referred to in Washington as the sequester — were included in the Budget Control Act; legislation that I opposed and that the President signed into law in August 2011. It capped discretionary spending and created a new Deficit Reduction Committee — commonly referred to as the SuperCommittee — to find an additional $1.2 trillion in savings. If the Super Committee failed, which it did, then the sequester would kick in. 

The sequester, which will hit on March 1, would implement $85 billion in across-the-board spending cuts this year, with another $1.1 trillion coming over the next decade. Because of how the sequester was structured, nearly $500 billion of the $1.1 trillion in cuts would come from the military. This $500 billion is on top of a previously-scheduled $500 billion in cuts to our armed forces. 

Now let me be very clear: Our national debt is over $16.5 trillion, so we need to cut spending and stop burdening future generations of Americans with debt. But to pay for this debt on the backs of our men and women in uniform as the president’s sequester does is the wrong approach.

Congressional Republicans have been working hard to prevent the sequester from taking effect, and have focused on common sense ideas to more proportionately cut spending across the government. The Republican House of Representatives has even passed two pieces of legislation to stop the sequester. But the Democratic Senate has failed to act and instead has proposed more tax increases on top of the tax hikes the president got earlier this year and all the Obamacare tax hikes that are starting to go into effect. And President Obama? He seems more focused on continuing his campaign, because he’s been completely missing in action on this important issue.  

Let’s remember that the president, who is fighting any spending reductions in favor of more tax hikes, dramatically increased federal spending during his first four years in office. First was his failed near $1 trillion stimulus bill and then his $2.6 trillion health law — both of which have pushed the size and scope of the federal government to unprecedented levels. But instead of looking at where there is fat in the government that could be reduced, the president and his allies are saying we’ve already cut too much, when in fact, we haven’t cut much of anything at all. They flatly refuse to even look at entitlement spending, which is the single largest driver of our debt. And they cling to the mistaken notion that we can tax our way out of a black hole of debt and into prosperity.   

The president needs to come to the table and work with Republicans on meaningful spending reductions that put our country on a path to economic stability, and ensure that the brave men and women of our military and all those who work with our armed forces — including those at Hill Air Force Base — can do their jobs protecting our nation.

There is a way forward, but Washington needs to get serious about it. That’s one of the reasons I outlined a set of five bipartisan, common sense entitlement reforms Congress and President Obama can act on today that will cut our debt. These are reasonable, rational ideas with bipartisan support, like adjusting the Medicare eligibility age, modernizing the Medigap program, simplifying Medicare beneficiary cost-sharing, implementing competitive bidding in Medicare, and instituting Medicaid per capita caps.

But none of the long-term spending reductions supported by Republicans and many Democrats will go anywhere without President Obama. He needs to get in the game and first work with us to replace the indiscriminate sequester spending cuts with sensible cuts and meaningful entitlement reforms, and second, work with Congress to put our country back on a path to fiscal responsibility.