A few days ago President Obama made public his new jobs plan and stimulus package.
If this sounds like something the American people have heard, oh not so many years ago, it is.
Kind of...
This stimulus package and jobs plan has a little something for everybody.
His plan includes traditional spending on roads and bridges that engineers insist are in urgent need of repair. Small businesses would receive generous tax cuts, as would most ordinary workers and most companies. This should appeal to the conservatives out there. His plan would also give the unemployed more help. Of course these are only a few things from President Obama's proposal.
The price tag that comes with President Obama's latest plan is definitely on the steep side at $447 billion dollars. President Obama has stated that every proposed dollar from this new stimulus will be offset by deficit cutting measures. Of course he did not and has not stated what those measures are. President Obama would like his package to make a tangible impact in 2012, to do this his bill would have to be finalized by November.
Here are a few categories/sectors and how the Obama jobs plan/stimulus package would affect them. Maybe Obama finally gets it.
Obama would like to spend $30 billion dollars to hire back teachers that have been laid off, as well as prevent any new lay offs. Our education system could use this, that is for sure. Since the end of 2009, budget cuts have forced the lay off of almost 277,000 educational jobs. According to President Obama, his plan would save the jobs of 280,000 teachers and support the hiring of tens of thousands more. The down side to this part of his proposal is in 2009 his stimulus package sent $44 billion dollars to states for spending on education. But at least President Obama sees there is a major problem with our public education funding.
Another part of President Obama's comprehensive jobs proposal is the proposed spending of $5 billion dollars on public safety jobs.
President Obama proposes spending $1 billion dollars to protect the fire fighters' jobs and to increase staffing levels nation wide. This funding would be sufficient to rehire every laid off fire fighter plus add thousands of new positions.This also proves to the general public and the public safety community that President Obama finally gets it. A proposal that puts fire fighters back to work, hires new personnel, and prevents lay offs, brown outs, station closures, and could possibly put four fire fighters on every fire engine/truck, is a good proposal in our book.
President Obama's proposal would add an additional $1 billion dollars for the S.A.F.E.R. program on top of what the Appropriation Committee recommended.
When President Obama gave his speech to the nation the other night outlining his proposal, he made it clear that he disagrees with those who blame unions and collective bargaining for slow job growth and the down economy. As we said earlier, maybe just maybe President Obama is getting it. He was quoted as saying " I reject the idea that we need to ask people to choose between their jobs and their safety...I reject the idea that we have to strip away collective bargaining rights to compete in a global economy."
This is great news for teachers and fire fighters and their respective unions.
The prospects for President Obama's proposal still remain uncertain. Republican leadership is putting together their version of a jobs/stimulus proposal with strong emphasis on repealing government regulation. The current session of Congress is notable for it partisanship and lack of cooperation, so getting Obama's proposal passed will have its hurdles.
If only everyone finally got it like President Obama finally did.....
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