Good look at some of the president's economic initiatives for the middle class

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from remarks by the President and Vice President at the 'Middle Class Task Force' meeting January 25: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-and-vice-president-middle-class-task-force-meeting


THE VICE PRESIDENT: Hey, folks. A year ago when President Obama established the Middle Class Task Force and asked me to chair it -- and I might add, we were only in office I think two days, Melody, when he set up this Middle Class Task Force -- because as we campaigned around the country, he made it clear that we were going to be sure that as we grew this economy, the middle class was not left behind as they had been the previous 10 to 12 years. And as we move from recession to recovery, our focus is the middle class.

So next month, the Middle Class Task Force is going to deliver its final report -- not final, its year-end report to the President. And this afternoon, we're spotlighting some of the items in that report that the President is going to be including in the upcoming budget. And these include, first of all, an expansion of the child tax credit. Since 2000, child care costs have grown significantly faster than inflation and twice as fast -- twice as fast as the median income of families with children. And that's why we're asking Congress to nearly double the credit for middle class families with incomes up to $85,000 and increase the credit for nearly every family making under $115,000.

Secondly, the President is going to be proposing an increase in funding for child care and -- the so-called Child Care and Development Fund to serve an additional 235,000 children in America. This is going to help working parents who are struggling to lift their families into the middle class.

And, thirdly, elder care. I mean, we all -- we're a generation -- the so-called baby boom generation is becoming very knowledgeable about elder care and the need to help middle class families who are caring for aging parents and relatives. People like Jill and me are part of what's called that "sandwich" generation. And I make a very good salary, but just going through caring for my mother the last year and a half, and before that, my father, who, thank God, lived to ripe old ages -- it was -- it's not easy. And I -- we sit there -- when my brother and sister and I -- brothers and sister and I divided up the cost of the care, we were able to do that, no complaints, not a problem. But I thought to myself, my lord, what would it be like -- a couple with two kids making $85,000 a year, even $125,000 a year? How do they do it?

So today we're proposing more support for caregivers by providing counseling, training, help with transportation, and temporary respite care when they just need a break or they have to work -- which most all of them do.

This is going to allow nearly 200,000 people who are now balancing work and providing care to an elderly relative to be served, and 3 million hours of respite care are going to be provided.

The fourth thing is we're going to be strengthening the income-based repayment program for student loans -- fancy way of saying a lot of kids and families graduate with significant loan responsibility and literally -- literally are left with very few options. They've got to go out and get the highest-paying job they can, maybe in an area they had no intention of working in, just to pay back the loan.

Today the average debt of a graduating senior from college -- now, listen -- the average debt -- people of my generation -- the average debt is $23,000. That is literally $2,000 more than my first house cost. But in any standard, it's a lot of money -- average debt. Some are graduating with a great deal more debt than that.

So our proposal ensures that Federal Student Loan payments for overburdened borrowers are never more than 10 percent of their income -- a change like that makes a real difference for a kid just out of school. For someone who earns 30,000 bucks and owes $20,000 in loans, this would lower his or her monthly
payment from $228 a month under the standard repayment plan to $115 a month. People who have to budget every day just to get by, they understand that's a big difference. That's a big difference.

And finally, we want to strengthen retirement security, which we talked about with the Secretary of Treasury, for American workers. Too many working people in this country don't have a good option to save their hard-earned money for retirement. And too many of those who do save are finding that at the end of the day they don't have enough saved to afford the basic retirement they deserve.

That's why we're proposing to give more workers better access to retirement plans at work, to match retirement savings for middle class Americans so they can save more, and to strengthen and update the 401(k) regulations so that they can save with greater confidence.

This means establishing an automatic individual retirement account. Today, 78 million Americans, working Americans --roughly half the workforce -- don't have employer-based retirement plans anymore. Our proposal lays the groundwork for an employer who do not currently offer retirement plans to enroll their employees in direct deposit IRAs. We found it's a simple proposition -- when you do that, people, if you're automatically enrolled, you can opt out. But they save a great deal more. And it just puts in place the requirement of the employer to provide that access out of their paycheck to go into an IRA. It's a simple proposition, but it's a big deal.

It also means simplifying and expanding the saver's credit, which helped working families save for retirement by providing a 50 percent match on the first $1,000 of retirement savings. So if you put a thousand bucks into a retirement account, your government is going to add even more -- another $500. It's an incentive, but long term it saves the government a lot more money than the 500 hundred bucks put in if in fact we find we have a generation that's able to care for themselves and not have to look to the government to provide some basic needs they need. This will not only help build up a nest egg for existing savers, but it's going to encourage workers who currently have no retirement accounts to start to save.

Taken together, these and other middle class proposals we believe will go a long way toward easing the strain on working families, allowing them to save more today to get further ahead tomorrow . . .


full transcript of remarks with questions: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-and-vice-president-middle-class-task-force-meeting

[NoNothing]

1. Does anyone know

How the student loan payment was calculated? By my reckoning, 10% of $30,000 is $3000. Divide by 12 and you get $250/mo. Where is $115 coming from? Isn't $228/mo already "less than 10 percent of their income?"

[Winterblues]

7. Under Clinton the Government loaned directly with very low or zero interest

One of the very first things Bush* did was to end that program and give it back to the banks and I suspect they charge a hefty interest.Obama has once again started loaning directly to student from government and I believe it is zero interest..

[Tyrone Slothrop]

2. Doesn't do much for me...

Solidly lower middle class here --

1. I'm childless

2. I don't have any student loans (made it through with scholarships and a job)

3. I don't earn enough to save anything for retirement -- I'm barely making it from paycheck to paycheck

I suppose this is good for other people, especially those with children, but I'm still fucked at the end of the day.

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5. I can see how that irks

I think the small business tax cuts will hit home for a lot of folks looking for work or trying to hold onto jobs in struggling businesses. there's already been an expansion of unemployment benefits with more possibly being considered. If you're in the boat I'm in, you could probably use a big rebate or stimulus boost right now.

[kenfrequed]

3. Student loan debt

Is actually a bigger problem than this particularly coupled with unemployment and crooked lenders.

[MadHound]

4. What the middle class really needs are jobs

Tax credits and all that are nice, but this country is dying for jobs. We've got approximately twenty percent unemployment when you count both those who are officially in the ranks of the unemployed and those who have given up trying to find a job. That's a staggering figure, worst since the Great Depression.

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6. I'm curious

What can the president and Congress actually do (in your view) to stimulate jobs besides the tax incentives to small businesses, renewable and sustainable energy enterprises, and other measures he's already initiated or proposed?

[MadHound]

8. A second stimulus for one thing

The last one had forty percent of its stimulus dollars turned into tax breaks, sacrificed on the altar of bipartisanship. A second stimulus would make my job hunting prospect much brighter as money would go into education, my field.

Furthermore, we need to have our infrastructure repaired and rebuilt. Simply doing this would not only provide jobs in the short term, but actually stimulate positive economic activity in the long term. Our rural telephone and internet infrastructure is slowly collapsing, leaving millions of people stuck back in the '70's.

It is good old fashioned Keynesian economics which has worked before and can work again if we let it. Tax incentives, tax cuts, and especially tax cuts yield the least bang for your buck when it comes to creating jobs. Having the government become the consumer of last resort and thus creating jobs is absolutely the best way to jump start the jobs market and the economy.

But sadly that's not going to happen and we're going to continue to wallow around in the muck of this jobless "recovery" for years to come.

[Tailormyst]

9. I would like to see some of the programs regulated better

Like renewable energy and the stimulous packages. When you have a huge windfarm being build you say "YAYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!" We CAN do it. Then you find out the money went to China so THEY could build the windmills. When money is given to rebuild a huge bridge you go "YESSSSS, We can do it!" Then you find out all the steel is being imported from China. Things like that, small things, could make a huige difference.

I would like to see some control over just who's economy our tax dollars are going to stimulate. Those two examples could have put ALOT of people to work in good paying jobs. Instead, we pay those people unemployment and other assistance because we sent our tax dollars over seas yet again. It's like we are being fucked from twice and not in a pleasant manner.

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10. some positve news on administration-supported wind energy incentive efforts

from the WH blog, posted by Heather Zichal on January 26: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/01/26/winds-recovery-are-blowing-across-nation


The Winds of Recovery are Blowing Across the Nation

THE American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) released their 4th Quarter 2009 industry assessment, in which they credited the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) with almost solely turning a potential decline into historic growth in the U.S. wind industry. According to their press release:

Early last year, before ARRA, the industry anticipated that in 2009 wind power development might drop by as much as 50% from 2008 levels, with equivalent job losses. The clear commitment by the President to create clean energy jobs and the swift implementation of ARRA incentives by the Administration in mid-summer reversed the situation. Recovery Act incentives spurred the growth of construction, operations and maintenance, and management jobs, helping the industry to save and create jobs in those sectors and shine as a bright spot in the economy.

ARRA included more than $80 billion in clean energy investments. Through these investments, American companies and American workers are involved in unprecedented growth in the generation of renewable energy, expanding manufacturing capacity for clean energy, advancing vehicle and fuel technologies, and building a bigger, better, smarter electric grid... all while saving and creating jobs here at home. Some of the direct benefits this report identifies include:

* The nation's fleet of wind plants grew by 39% last year alone.
* America's wind power fleet will avoid an estimated 62 million tons of greenhouse gases annually, equivalent to taking 10.5 million cars off the road.

This report is good news, and it is consistent with the clean energy jobs numbers recently released by the President's Council of Economic Advisors. Across the country, communities are beginning to establish the clean energy industries that will power the 21st century global economy. Just last week, President Obama got to see firsthand how clean energy investments are putting people to work during his visit to the Wind Turbine Manufacturing and Fab Lab facilities at Lorain County Community College (LCCC) in Elyria, Ohio. LCCC is offering the first associate's degree credit program in Ohio in the burgeoning field of wind turbine power generation. This program will train students to become installation and maintenance professionals in the wind energy sector. The new associate's degree program will cover an overview of alternative energy sources, with specialized training in electronics, electronic controls, mechanical systems and more.

During the visit, the President spoke on the undertapped potential for clean energy jobs:

That's why I'm calling on Congress to pass a jobs bill to put more Americans to work building off our Recovery Act; put more Americans back to work rebuilding roads and railways; provide tax breaks to small businesses for hiring people; offer families incentives to make their homes more energy-efficient, saving them money while creating jobs.

That's why we enacted initiatives that are beginning to give rise to a clean energy economy. That's part of what's going on in this community college. If we hadn't done anything with the Recovery Act, talk to the people who are building wind turbines and solar panels. They would have told you their industry was about to collapse because credit had completely frozen. And now you're seeing all across Ohio some of the -- this state has received more funds than just about anybody in order to build on that clean energy economy -- new cutting-edge wind turbines and batteries that are going to be going into energy-efficient cars.

Almost $25 million of our investment went to a plant right here in Elyria that's helping produce the car batteries of the future. That's what we're going to keep on doing for the rest of 2010 and 2011 and 2012, until we've got this country working again.

The AWEA assessment shows the solid progress made over the last year, but there is still more to be done to both ensure a long-term market signal for renewables and to ensure the U.S. is the global leader in clean energy technology. To achieve this goal, Congress must pass comprehensive energy and climate legislation to make renewable energy the profitable kind of energy and provide business with the certainty and predictability they need. The House of Representatives has already passed such legislation and the Senate is working to do the same. The President will continue to make passage of legislation a top priority given its benefits for our economy, our security and the environment.

Heather Zichal is Deputy Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change

[Tailormyst]

11. And I applaud those positive moves

But we have to be smarter with our money and use it to create as many jobs as possible HERE. I am not bashing the President. I simply think they could have thought things through more and frankly, its not to late for them to make some changes going forward. I mean seriously, there are no out of work steel workers here in the US? No steel companies here that would have liked the stimulus money the Chinese are receiving? I don't think it was done on purpose, I just think in the chaos of the market crashing, decisions were made hastily. Those decisions need to be looked at again. The more GOOD jobs are created the better the country is and in the end the better for Obama.

[MidwestPerspective]

12. State of Union Speech targets voters from Generation Jones (between Boomers & GenX)

Interesting article. Relevantly, “Sandwich Generation” is not an actual generation, but rather a term which has been used for over 30 years to describe the “sandwiched” life stage which various actual generations (e.g. WWII Gen, Boomers, etc.) pass through.

Importantly, most of those who are currently part of the “sandwich generation life phase” are not Boomers, but rather are part of Generation Jones (born 1954-1965, between Boomers and Gen X). It is crucial to distinguish between the post-WWII demographic boom in births vs. the cultural generations born during that era. Generations are a function of the common formative experiences of its members, not the fertility rates of its parents. Many experts now believe it breaks down more or less this way:

DEMOGRAPHIC boom in babies: 1946-1964
Baby Boom GENERATION: 1942-1953
Generation Jones: 1954-1965
Generation X: 1966-1978

As numerous top national commentators have pointed out, GenJones voters might well decide the 2010 midterms, so it’s not a surprise to see the Obama administration targeting GenJonesers with these new proposals.