something you'll never hear about from M$M:
American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act (H.R. 4213) will save or create well over a million jobsRoss Eisenbrey
May 25, 2010
The House and Senate are about to debate the American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act (H.R. 4213), which would provide desperately needed help for a U.S. economy that is still recovering from the worst recession in 70 years and for millions of American families who will benefit from new jobs, unemployment compensation, and lower taxes. Failure to enact it could have serious consequences for an economy that is just now turning the corner from job loss to job creation. Without the added demand that the Act will generate, the economy risks sliding back into a weakened state and repeating the cycle of consumer retrenchment, lost business, layoffs, and further erosion of consumer confidence that has characterized most of the last two-and-a-half years.
This jobs bill has a host of provisions of varying importance, including:
•A $7 billion package of loan guarantees for small business, and bonding authority for state and municipal infrastructure investment;
•Renewal of the $6.6 billion research and development tax credit;
•A $2.3 billion tax credit for capital investment in the United States in 2010;
•Funding relief to keep employers from having to cut operations and lay off workers to meet the stringent, poorly conceived rules of the Pension Protection Act of 2006;
•$24 billion in additional funding to help states pay for Medicaid, without which there will be significant layoffs in state governments across the nation;
•$5 billion to renew individual tax cuts;
•$2.6 billion for a one-year extension of the TANF emergency jobs fund, which has created almost 200,000 jobs; and
•$1 billion to create 300,000 jobs for young people this summer.
Together, these provisions in H.R. 4213 will help save or create well over a million critically needed jobs, and there are other worthwhile provisions in the bill, as well. But nothing is more urgently needed or more important to the ongoing recovery than the bill’s extension of eligibility for unemployment insurance benefits and COBRA tax credits through the end of 2010, which together will cost $55 billion.
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... and of course, the Republicans have been fighting and delaying passage of this bill every step of the way.