Tonight, in an address to a joint session of Congress, President Obama asked Congress to work quickly to pass the American Jobs Act, his new legislative proposal to stimulate the economy. Although some details of the proposal are still forthcoming, initial reports indicate that this legislation will include approximately $447 billion worth of new tax cuts and spending increases. The President tasked the Joint Deficit Reduction Committee, charged by the debt ceiling deal to come up with at least $1.2 trillion in savings over the next 10 years, with finding additional savings to offset the cost of this proposal and promised to release a long-term deficit reduction plan on September 19th. Preliminary outlines of the President’s proposal indicate that it will call for approximately $30 billion to state and local governments to rehire teachers, $5 billion to hire emergency first responders, $25 billion of investment in public school infrastructure, $5 billion to modernize community colleges, $15 billion to rehabilitate vacant homes, and $50 billion for transportation infrastructure projects, including $10 billion to capitalize an infrastructure bank modeled after a proposal by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-TX) and Sen. John Kerry (D-MA).
Further details of this proposal will be emerging over the next few days, as the White House holds a series of conference calls on the American Jobs Act and releases the bill text. The Ferguson Group will be monitoring these developments and you can visit this blog over the coming week to receive periodic updates on the President's jobs plan.
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