Obama's American Jobs Act Calls for More Spending on Transportation, Schools

摘要

Seeking to reduce persistently high levels of unemployment, President Obama recently unveiled a $447-billion plan intended to promote job creation. Approximately a quarter of the total would go toward funding various facets of infrastructure and efforts to increase jobs in the construction sector. Although it has drawn wide support from advocates of increased federal spending on infrastructure, the proposal came barely more than a month after the political standoff in early August on whether to raise the federal debt ceiling. As a result, efforts to procure funding for the priorities in the president's plan may hinge on the extent to which the members of the congressional "super-committee" established to address the federal deficit (formally, the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction) succeed in their task.