Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama recently announced a $447 billion “American Jobs Act” proposal, a bill aiming to put construction workers back on the job, improve infrastructure and help small businesses.
Urging Congress to pass the bill as soon as possible, the president outlined various projects in his speech on Thursday.
“There should be nothing controversial about this piece of legislation,” the president said in his speech. “Everything in here is the kind of proposal that’s been supported by both Democrats and Republicans — including many who sit here tonight. And everything in this bill will be paid for.”
The bill provides a tax cut for small businesses — and not big corporations — to help them hire and expand immediately, provides an additional tax cut to any business that increases wages and creates jobs while repairing bridges, roads and more than 35,000 public schools with projects chosen by need and impact rather than by earmarks.
The bill also proposes extending unemployment benefits and creating training programs to help the unemployed develop skills, connect to jobs and help the long-term unemployed. The bill would also cut half the payroll taxes out of worker paychecks and remove barriers in the current federal refinancing program.
President Obama said the purpose of the act is to put more people back to work and more money in the pockets of those who are working, along with creating more jobs for construction workers, teachers, veterans, first responders and for the long-term unemployed.
The president called for an immediate investment in roads, rails and airports, with a $50 billion investment, helping to modernize an infrastructure that now receives a grade of “D” from the American Society of Civil Engineers, and putting hundreds of thousands of construction workers back on the job.
In his proposal, he also urged Congress to pass a National Infrastructure Bank capitalized with $10 billion, in order to leverage private and public capital and invest in a range of infrastructure projects of national and regional significance, “without earmarks or traditional political influence,” according to White House officials.
Fifteen billion dollars would be invested in rehabilitating and refurbishing hundreds of thousands of vacant and foreclosed homes and businesses.
Named “Project Rebuild,” the program would attempt to bring in expertise and capital from the private sector, focus on commercial and residential property improvements, and expand property solutions like land banks to both create construction jobs and reduce blight and crime to stabilize housing prices. This approach will not only create construction jobs but will help reduce blight and crime and stabilize housing prices in areas hardest hit by the housing crisis.
The bill would be paid for without adding to the deficit, the president said. The budget agreement passed in July will cut government spending by about $1 trillion over the next 10 years, and requires Congress to come up with an additional $1.5 trillion in savings by the end of December.
President Obama asked that Congress increase the amount to cover the full cost of the American Jobs Act.
The act is part of a “more ambitious” deficit plan the president said would cover the cost of this jobs bill, but stabilize debt in the long run.
The president stated in his speech that the act was based on a bill written by a Texas Republican and a Massachusetts Democrat, adding that 50 House Republicans have proposed the same payroll tax cut outlined in the plan.
“The idea for a big boost in construction is supported by America’s largest business organization and America’s largest labor organization,” he added.
The bill would also speed up the process for contractors of the federal government to get paid faster, and cut red tape that prevents “too many rapidly growing startup companies from raising capital and going public,” he said.
He cautioned, however, that he would not wipe out basic protections that protect American citizens as workers and consumers.
“If we provide the right incentives, the right support — and if we make sure our trading partners play by the rules — we can be the ones to build everything from fuel-efficient cars to advanced biofuels to semiconductors that we sell all around the world,” he said. “That’s how America can be number one again. And that’s how America will be number one again.”
