When Peter Plastrik proposed skills vouchers as a "G.I. Bill for American Workers" in the January/February 1995 issue of The New Democrat, it was as an idea to help workers that had an added benefit: It would also demonstrate Democrats could rid themselves of a reflexive tendency to defend government bureaucracies, however ineffective and inefficient. When President Clinton embraced it as a signature initiative -- soon joined in support by Speaker Newt Gingrich -- it looked like a landmark bipartisan reform effort. Now, in the midst of an ever-growing national debate on how to equip Americans to benefit from rapid economic and technological change, it looks like a potential centerpiece to a new social compact for the Information Age.

The idea is simple: take the federal and state funds currently tied up in a complex welter of job training programs and give them directly to workers in the form of vouchers they can use whenever and wherever they need them to purchase skills training. In an economy that increasingly requires constant upgrades and adjustments in skills and lifelong learning, skills vouchers could empower workers to control their own preparation for the jobs of the future, while stimulating a competitive market of public and private training services outside the lines of the old employment and training bureaucracies.

Next week the Senate is expected to vote on S.1186, the Workforce Investment Partnership Act. Similar legislation passed the House last year. This bill is far from perfect. It tends to focus more on liberating state employment and training departments from federal regulation rather than liberating workers and training providers from both. Still, it would push states to set up one-stop shops where a broad array of training services could be accessed to meet any need, and would authorize "skills grants" to workers to pay for them. That's a big step in the right direction, and a real breakthrough towards the realization of a New Democratic idea.