From Chairman Baucus:
“Our country is facing its biggest economic crisis in generations, and tonight Congress made a bold statement: we will not sit idly by while Americans suffer. President Obama now has a bill to sign that will create millions of good-paying jobs and help families and businesses stay afloat financially. It will shore up our schools and roads and bridges, and infuse cash into new sectors - like green energy and technology - that will sustain our economy for the long term.
“The passage and signing of this bill will not end our economic crisis. A lot of American families and businesses are going to have a hard row to hoe over the next few years, and the work we have to do to make things better has only just begun. But it’s my hope that we can look back on the passage of this legislation as the moment that stopped the slide into further financial trouble, and marked the beginning of a real recovery for America’s economy."
The final recovery and reinvestment plan contained approximately $287 billion in tax cuts for families and businesses, with a particular focus on creating jobs in the green energy, highway, and school building sectors. The tax cuts included a $400-per-worker tax credit - known as Making Work Pay credit- to put cash in the hands of America’s working families in the next few months. Additional Finance Committee provisions included a $14.4 billion measure providing a one-time, $250 billion payment to seniors, veterans, and retirees, and approximately $177 billion more in investments to create jobs in health information technology, to help out-of-work Americans keep their health care coverage and find new employment, and to give aid to struggling state economies. The legislation also included a major expansion of Trade Adjustment Assistance to help American firms avoid layoffs due to international competition, and to help workers negatively affected by trade stay on their financial feet and retrain for new, good-paying jobs here at home.
A full summary of provisions written in the Finance and House Ways & Means Committees is available on the Finance website.
Source: Ranking Member’s News
