CommonSense American Succeeds on a Fourth Issue!
We have outstanding news! CommonSense American is now four-for-four in Congress.
Congress has passed Workforce Pell legislation extending Pell Grants to shorter workforce programs. Now, every year, tens of thousands more Americans will get the training they need to have more meaningful and financially rewarding careers.
Through the new State Ambassador program, our reach in Congress grew five times larger as we briefed a record 320 Congressional offices on the views of the thousands of CommonSense Americans who weighed in on the Career-Connected Learning (CCL) brief, including state-specific results for most states. The CCL poll results, including 89% support for Workforce Pell, shaped each of these 320 meetings. The bill’s specific provisions aligned with our results to a striking degree, emphasizing performance outcome criteria over administrative rules to ensure Pell Grant money only supports programs that achieve the aims of placing graduates in higher-paying jobs. It’s the contribution of individual CommonSense Americans who made this possible.
It’s deeply satisfying that we’ve been able to come together as everyday Americans from across the country and today’s bitter political divides to help Congress pass practical solutions like this. Honestly, our four-for-four track record completely exceeds the unreasonably high hopes I had when founding CommonSense American. We have played a major role in (1) ending the surprise medical bills that were bankrupting tens of thousands of Americans a year, (2) making the largest investment in infrastructure since the Eisenhower Administration, (3) fortifying peaceful transitions of power for generations to come with the Electoral Count Reform Act, and now (4) making life-changing job training available to tens of thousands more Americans.
With Congress passing the Workforce Pell bill as part of its reconciliation package, our attention now turns exclusively to picking our next topic. As you know, we’re in the final stages of our new undertaking to work with the Senate and House bipartisan groups at the center of American policymaking to choose the same issue to work on together. As impressive as our four-for-four track record is, the best is yet to come!
We’ll be in touch soon as we close in on our work with the bipartisan congressional groups to choose our next topic.
I’ve never been prouder to be shoulder-to-shoulder with you in bringing Americans’ common sense to Washington!
– Keith Allred, Founder & President, CommonSense American