Obameter: More Promise Kept EEOC and Clean Fuel Funding

[SpartanDem]

Politfact has added two more promises to the kept category

Funding levels restored
Updated: Friday, January 8th, 2010 | By Wes Allison

When the president signed the 2010 omnibus spending bill in December, Barack Obama and the Democrat-led Congress made good on his pledge to restore funding to pre-Bush administration levels for both the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, which enforces the requirements that government contractors adhere to federal hiring and antidiscrimination rules.

Thanks to this influx of millions of additional dollars, the agencies are on track to hire hundreds of investigators, lawyers, mediators and support staff to eat away at a backlog of workplace discrimination complaints, as the president promised.

According to the U.S. House committee report on the Labor Department funding, Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs will get an extra $19 million to help the agency conduct more than 5,000 audits of contractor practices a year -– an increase of more than 20 percent. Jesse Lawder, a spokesman for the agency, said the agency also plans to hire about 200 new workers. The agency's total budget for 2010 is now about $103 million.


The EEOC, meanwhile, will use its funding increase of $23.3 million to hire 140 employees, according to an agency report submitted to Congress. The agency’s total budget for 2010 is now about $367 million.

“This represents the largest budget increase the EEOC has received in a long time, in at least the past decade,” said David Grinberg, an EEOC spokesman in Washington. He said the agency will use the extra manpower to eat away at a backlog of cases.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/promise/297/restore-funding-to-the-eeoc-and-the-us-departmen/

On the campaign trail, Barack Obama lamented the lack of funding for clean energy science and research.

Obama promised to double funding for the efforts, which means we should have seen at least $6 billion dedicated to clean energy research this year.

We started by poking around in the stimulus bill. According to the Department of Energy, the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy got about $2.5 billion for applied research, development and production of geothermal energy, solar energy and wind energy among other renewable fuels. The same office got an additional $2.2 billion through in the latest round of the appropriations process.

So far, that brings us to $4.7 billion.

The stimulus bill also included $1.2 billion to the Department of Energy's Office of Science -- also under the Department of Energy -- to support major construction, laboratory infrastructure and research efforts. Among other renewable energy research facilities, the money so far has been given to Oak Ridge National Laboratory and to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, both hot spots of advanced energy research. The Office of Science got an additional $4.9 billion in its latest appropriations bill.

All told, that brings us to $10.8 billion, far more than the $6 billion Obama needed to meet his goal. Since Obama has met and exceeded his goal, we'll give him a Promise Kept on this pledge.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/promise/495/double-federal-spending-for-research-on-clean-fuel/

[SpartanDem]

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[Hekate]

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