On Wednesday, the Senate Appropriations subcommittee had Elaine over to testify about the nearly $1 billion dispersed by the Labor Department under her tenure.

Labor Secretary Chao, appearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies, defends the administration’s $53.1 billion FY 2009 budget request for DOL against criticisms that it devotes too little attention to worker safety and job training and too much attention to investigating unions. (BNA, sub req’d)

Specifically, Senators wondered whatever happened to about $273 million handed out without any competition or oversight.

“This GAO report confirms what Congress already believes-that there hasn’t been appropriate oversight and accountability in how these grants have been administered,” said Rachel Gragg, director of federal policy for the Workforce Alliance in Washington. “These grants are circumventing the current workforce development system.”

“Under this administration, the Labor Department’s ability to … support a prepared and competitive workforce has declined significantly,” said Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa and chairman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over the agency, in prepared testimony at a hearing Wednesday, May 7.

Elaine’s response? We don’t really know what she’s even talking about:

Too many people lack “the training they need, and that’s a tragedy,” Chao said.

And workers in the system can be misguided. “We’re training people for jobs that don’t exist,” she said.

Riiight. So even though they lack training, and you’re training people for “jobs that don’t exist,” it’s still a good idea to cut the training budget by 16%, which is what Elaine advocated for on Wednesday.

It’s becoming more and more clear that Elaine Chao has effectively run the Department of Labor into the ground, screwing America’s workers day in and day out. By the time she leaves, the next administration is going to have a lot to repair.

We have lots of Elaine news from the last week, so kick back and check out what we have on our shady, shifty, shoddy Secretary of Labor.

Shady Appointees: Elaine lets appointee hide behind diplomatic immunity. Last month, Elaine met with the NAFTA council—the body that could waive diplomatic immunity for lobbyist and former official Mark Knouse. Knouse is the one whose numerous questionable expenses—nearly $10,000 in travel expenditures and about $1 million in shady contracts and vendor payments—forced him to resign. So did Elaine bring this to the NAFTA council? You guess.

Shoddy work: House votes to force Elaine to act. In April, we reported on a House hearing held because Elaine’s OSHA has failed to create comprehensive combustible dust regulations. Last week the House of Representatives got fed up, and voted to require OSHA to write safety standards for combustible dust in workplaces.

Federal regulators would have to come up with new ways to prevent combustible dust explosions in factories under legislation passed by the House… The bill now goes to the Senate, but the White House already has said President Bush would veto it. Despite worker deaths, Congressional votes, Elaine and her buddy President Bush still don’t seem to think combustible dust is a problem.

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