Tag Archives: Barack Obama

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Breaking News: More Women in Poverty Than Ever, Tell Congress to Act on President’​s Jobs Plan


Trust me: it’s no fun being the bearer of bad news.

I recently told you that since the recession officially ended, women’s unemployment rates have actually increased. But that’s not the only grim reality: today the Census Bureau released new data, and NWLC’s analysis finds that record numbers of women are living in poverty — and extreme poverty.

   WWW.NWLC.ORG

With two-thirds of women in the role of head of their household or a contributor to their family’s income, it’s more important than ever to make sure that unemployed women have a chance to get back to work. That’s why President Obama’s plan for job creation, submitted to Congress this week, has come at such a critical time for women and their families. Congress needs to act quickly on these proposals to address the immediate deficit facing this country — the jobs deficit. The numbers released today by the Census Bureau underscore the urgency.

Urge your Members of Congress to act on job creation NOW!

www.nwlc.org

Here are just a few important findings from the new data:

  • The rise in women living in poverty: Over 17 million women lived in poverty in 2010, including more than 7.5 million in extreme poverty, with an income below half of the federal poverty line — both all-time highs. The poverty rate among women rose to 14.5 percent in 2010 from 13.9 percent in 2009, the highest rate in 17 years. The poverty rate among single mothers climbed to 40.7 percent in 2010; more than half of all poor children lived with single mothers.
  • The wage gap: The wage gap for women remained as wide as in 2009. Women working full-time year-round were paid only 77 cents for every dollar paid to their male counterparts.
  • Uninsured women: The rate of women without health insurance rose to 19.7 percent in 2010 from 19.2 percent in 2009 — the highest rate in more than a decade. A total of 19 million women were uninsured in 2010 — an increase of more than 0.5 million women from the previous year.
You can get more details from our press release and check back later this week for our further analysis of what these new numbers mean for women and their families.

WWW.NWLC.ORG

Tell your Members of Congress to take action on the President’s proposals to create jobs, grow the economy, and alleviate hardship for women and families. And tell them not undercut job-creation measures by cutting funding for vital public services, which would destroy jobs and make it harder for struggling families to make ends meet.The President issued the call to action and submitted his plan to Congress. Now it’s up to Congress to act!Sincerely,
Joan Entmacher Joan Entmacher
Vice President, Family Economic Security
National Women’s Law Center   

P.S. You can read about the important provisions for women in the President’s jobs plan here.
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$53 Billion For Iraq, $0 For America …Judd Legum, ThinkProgress


For the past decade, Congress has had no problem spending over $120 billion to rebuild schools, roads, bridges and other essential infrastructure in Iraq and Afghanistan. Today, America‘s infrastructure is crumbling and millions of people are out of work. Contact your member of Congress and tell them it’s time to rebuild America.

It just takes a second using our form: http://www2.americanprogress.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=163

All the Republican leaders in Congress voted to approve massive amounts of funding to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan without a penny in offsets. But now they are opposing President Obama’s proposal to rebuild America even though it’s fully paid for.

Contact your member today and demand we invest at least as much in our own communities as we did in Iraq and Afghanistan. And let us know what you hear back from your representatives.

Best,

Judd

Judd Legum
judd@thinkprogress.org
202-682-1611

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AFL – CIO


President Obama took an important and necessary step last night: He started a serious national conversation about how to solve our jobs crisis.Now, Congressneeds to get to work.Tell Congress—particularly congressional Republicans—to stop playing politics and get to work to create jobs.

Did you watch President Obama’s speech last night? He showed working people he is willing to go to the mat to create new jobs on a substantial scale. His speech should energize the nation to come together and get serious about jobs.

We call on Congress to act and look forward to working with the president and Congress on all elements of this proposal. As the president explained, we no longer can delay putting Americans back to work rebuilding our nation’s schools, roads, bridges, transit, ports, rail, communications and energy systems. And we need to help state and local governments avoid layoffs that are dragging down the economy—rejecting the myth that the only way to end a crisis Wall Street started is to punish firefighters, teachers and others who perform critical public services.

Tell Congress: It’s time to get moving on jobs. Start with President Obama’s proposals and then keep going.

The plan announced by President Obama to create jobs is only the opening bid in a national conversation we’ve needed to have for a long time. In the coming weeks and months, we expect to see more proposals from the president and Congress to put America back to work.

President Obama understands this economic crisis was not created overnight, and it will not be solved overnight. The middle class has been under attack for decades. He understands we need to rebuild our economy for the 21st century and rebuild our middle class.

But doing this will require a revolution in the way Washington takes on these questions. Republicans are going to have to stop blocking bills that sustain or create millions of jobs and start offering and accepting credible solutions. As the president explained last night, we can delay no longer.

Tell Congress America wants to work. Add your name, then spread the word to your friends and family.

America isn’t broke—we’re the richest country in the world. We will only go broke if our leaders fail year after year to create jobs and turn our economy around. We can’t let that happen.

Politicians need to recognize that America’s best days are still before us. We cannot accept the disappearance of the American middle class or several more years of crisis-level joblessness. We can and must solve the jobs crisis—and we must start now. Please take action to help us make this happen.

In Solidarity,

Richard L. Trumka
President, AFL-CIO

P.S. Some politicians claim cuts to our social safety net, deregulation and lower taxes for the rich will fix our problems. But they’re flat wrong. If we continue down this road, it only will destroy more jobs and send us into a vicious downward spiral. Our country is too good and too rich to weaken our commitment to safety net protections such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and unemployment insurance.

We don’t have time to waste on the same old failed policies that drove our economy off a cliff in the first place. Tell Congress: Working families will judge our elected leaders by whether they act with integrity and energy to create good jobs now.

To find out more about the AFL-CIO, please visit our website at www.aflcio.org.

Click here to unsubscribe.

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The White House … from the Press Secretary


Fact Sheet: The American Jobs Act

THE AMERICAN JOBS ACT

1. Tax Cuts to Help America’s Small Businesses Hire and Grow

  • Cutting the payroll tax in half for 98 percent of businesses:
    The President’s plan will cut in half the taxes paid by businesses on
    their first $5 million in payroll, targeting the benefit to the 98
    percent of firms that have payroll below this threshold.
  • A complete payroll tax holiday for added workers or increased wages:
    The President’s plan will completely eliminate payroll taxes for firms
    that increase their payroll by adding new workers or increasing the
    wages of their current worker (the benefit is capped at the first $50
    million in payroll increases).
  • Extending 100% expensing into 2012: This continues an effective incentive for new investment.
  • Reforms and regulatory reductions to help entrepreneurs and small businesses access capital.

2. Putting Workers Back on the Job While Rebuilding and Modernizing America

  • A “Returning Heroes” hiring tax credit for veterans: This provides tax credits from $5,600 to $9,600 to encourage the hiring of unemployed veterans.
  • Preventing up to 280,000 teacher layoffs,while keeping cops and firefighters on the job.
  • Modernizing at least 35,000 public schools across the country,supporting new science labs, Internet-ready classrooms and renovations at schools across the country, in rural and urban areas.
  • Immediate investments in infrastructure and a bipartisan National Infrastructure Bank, modernizing our roads, rail, airports and waterways while putting hundreds of thousands of workers back on the job.
  • A New “Project Rebuild”, which will put people to work
    rehabilitating homes, businesses and communities, leveraging private
    capital and scaling land banks and other public-private collaborations.
  • Expanding access to high-speed wireless as part of a plan for freeing up the nation’s spectrum.

3. Pathways Back to Work for Americans Looking for Jobs.

  • The most innovative reform to the unemployment insurance program in 40 years:
    As part of an extension of unemployment insurance to prevent 5 million
    Americans looking for work from losing their benefits, the President’s
    plan includes innovative work-based reforms to prevent layoffs and give
    states greater flexibility to use UI funds to best support job-seekers,
    including:

    • Work-Sharing:  UI for workers whose employers choose work-sharing over layoffs.
    • A new “Bridge to Work” program: The plan builds on and improves
      innovative state programs where those displacedtake temporary, voluntary
      work or pursue on-the-job training.
    • Innovative entrepreneurship and wage insurance programs: States will
      also be empowered to implement wage insurance to help reemploy older
      workers and programs that make it easier for unemployed workers to start
      their own businesses.
  • A $4,000 tax credit to employers for hiring long-term unemployed workers.
  • Prohibiting employers from discriminating against unemployed workers when hiring.
  • Expanding job opportunities for low-income youth and adults
    through a fund for successful approaches for subsidized employment,
    innovative training programs and summer/year-round jobs for youth.

4. Tax Relief for Every American Worker and Family

  • Cutting payroll taxes in half for 160 million workers next year:
    The President’s plan will expand the payroll tax cut passed last year
    to cut workers payroll taxes in half in 2012 – providing a $1,500 tax
    cut to the typical American family, without negatively impacting the
    Social Security Trust Fund.
  • Allowing more Americans to refinance their mortgages at today’s near 4 percent interest rates, which can put more than $2,000 a year in a family’s pocket.

5. Fully Paid for as Part of the President’s Long-Term Deficit Reduction Plan.To
ensure that the American Jobs Act is fully paid for, the President will
call on the Joint Committee to come up with additional deficit
reduction necessary to pay for the Act and still meet its deficit
target. The President will, in the coming days, release a detailed plan
that will show how we can do that while achieving the additional deficit
reduction necessary to meet the President’s broader goal of stabilizing
our debt as a share of the economy.

AMERICAN JOBS ACT OVERVIEW

The American people understand that the economic crisis and the deep
recession weren’t created overnight and won’t be solved overnight. The
economic security of the middle class has been under attack for decades.
That’s why President Obama believes we need to do more than just
recover from this economic crisis – we need to rebuild the economy the
American way, based on balance, fairness, and the same set of rules for
everyone from Wall Street to Main Street.  We can work together to
create the jobs of the future by helping small business entrepreneurs,
by investing in education, and by making things the world buys. The
President understands that to restore an American economy that’s built
to last we cannot afford to outsource American jobs and encourage
reckless financial deals that put middle class security at risk.

To create jobs, the President unveiled the American Jobs Act – nearly
all of which is made up of ideas that have been supported by both
Democrats and Republicans, and that Congress should pass right away to
get the economy moving now. The purpose of the American Jobs Act is
simple: put more people back to work and put more money in the pockets
of working Americans. And it would do so without adding a dime to the
deficit.

 Tax Cuts to Help America’s Small Businesses Hire and Grow

 New Tax Cuts to Businesses to Support Hiring and Investment:The President is proposing three tax cuts to provide immediate incentives to hire and invest:

  • Cutting the Payroll Tax Cut in Half for the First $5 Million in Wages:This
    provision would cut the payroll tax in half to 3.1% for employers on
    the first $5 million in wages, providing broad tax relief to all
    businesses but targeting it to the 98 percent of firms with wages below
    this level.
  • Temporarily Eliminating Employer Payroll Taxes on Wages for New Workers or Raises for Existing Workers:The
    President is proposing a full holiday on the 6.2% payroll tax firms pay
    for any growth in their payroll up to $50 million above the prior year,
    whether driven by new hires, increased wages or both. This is the kind
    of job creation measure that CBO has called the most effective of all
    tax cuts in supporting employment.
  • Extending 100% Expensing into 2012:The President is
    proposing to extend 100 percent expensing, the largest temporary
    investment incentive in history, allowing all firms – large and small –
    to take an immediate deduction on investments in new plants and
    equipment.
  • Helping Entrepreneurs and Small Businesses Access Capital and Grow: The
    President’s plan includes administrative, regulatory and legislative
    measures – including those developed and recommended by the President’s
    Jobs Council – to help small firms start and expand. This includes
    changing the way the government does business with small firms. The
    Administration will soon announce a plan to accelerate government
    payments to small contractors to help put money in their hands faster.
    The President is also charging his CIO and CTO to, within 90 days, stand
    up a one-stop, online portal for small businesses to easily access
    government services. As part of the President’s Startup America
    initiative, the Administration will work with the SEC to conduct a
    comprehensive review of securities regulations from the perspective of
    these small companies to reduce the regulatory burdens on small business
    capital formation in ways that are consistent with investor protection,
    including expanding “crowdfunding” opportunities and increasing
    mini-offerings. Finally, the President’s plan calls for Congress to pass
    comprehensive patent reform, increase guarantees for bonds to help
    small businesses compete for infrastructure projects and remove
    burdensome withholding requirements that keep capital out of the hands
    of job creators.

 Putting Workers Back on the Job While Rebuilding and Modernizing America 

  • Tax Credits and Career Readiness Efforts to Support Veterans’ Hiring:The
    President is proposing a Returning Heroes Tax Credit of up to $5,600
    for hiring unemployed veterans who have been looking for a job for more
    than six months, and a Wounded Warriors Tax Credit of up to $9,600 for
    hiring unemployed workers with service-connected disabilities who have
    been looking for a job for more than six months, while creating a new
    task force to maximize career readiness of servicemembers.
  • Preventing Layoffs of Teachers, Cops and Firefighters:The
    President is proposing to invest $35 billion to prevent layoffs of up
    to 280,000 teachers, while supporting the hiring of tens of thousands
    more and keeping cops and firefighters on the job. These funds would
    help states and localities avoid and reverse layoffs now, requiring that
    funds be drawn down quickly. Under the President’s proposal, $30
    billion be directed towards educators and $5 billion would support the
    hiring and retention of public safety and first responder personnel.
  • Modernizing Over 35,000 Schools – From Science Labs and Internet-Ready Classrooms to Renovated Facilities:The
    President is proposing a $25 billion investment in school
    infrastructure that will modernize at least 35,000 public schools –
    investments that will create jobs, while improving classrooms and
    upgrading our schools to meet 21st century needs. This
    includes a priority for rural schools and dedicated funding for Bureau
    of Indian Education funded schools. Funds could be used for a range of
    emergency repair and renovation projects, greening and energy efficiency
    upgrades, asbestos abatement and removal, and modernization efforts to
    build new science and computer labs and to upgrade technology in our
    schools. The President is also proposing a $5 billion investment in
    modernizing community colleges (including tribal colleges), bolstering
    their infrastructure in this time of need while ensuring their ability
    to serve future generations of students and communities.
  • Making an Immediate Investment in Our Roads, Rails and Airports:
    The President’s plan includes $50 billion in immediate investments for
    highways, transit, rail and aviation, helping to modernize an
    infrastructure that now receives a grade of “D” from the American
    Society of Civil Engineers and putting hundreds of thousands of
    construction workers back on the job. The President’s plan includes
    investments to improve our airports, support NextGen Air Traffic
    Modernization efforts, and resources for the TIGER and TIFIA programs,
    which target competitive dollars to innovative multi-modal
    infrastructure programs. It will also take special steps to enhance
    infrastructure-related job training opportunities for individuals from
    underrepresented groups and ensure that small businesses can compete for
    infrastructure contracts.The President will work administratively to
    speed infrastructure investment through a recently issued Presidential
    Memorandum developed with his Jobs Council directingdepartments and
    agencies to identify high impact, job-creating infrastructure projects
    that can be expedited in a transparent manner through outstanding review
    and permitting processes. The call for greater infrastructure
    investment has been joined by leaders from AFL-CIO President Richard
    Trumka to U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Thomas Donohue.
  • Establishing a National Infrastructure Bank:The
    President is calling for Congress to pass a National Infrastructure Bank
    capitalized with $10 billion, in order to leverage private and public
    capital and to invest in a broad range of infrastructure projects of
    nationaland regional significance, without earmarks or traditional
    political influence. The Bank would be based on the model Senators Kerry
    and Hutchison have championed while building on legislation by Senators
    Rockefeller and Lautenberg and the work of long-time infrastructure
    bank champions like Rosa DeLauro and the input of the President’s Jobs
    Council.
  • Project Rebuild: Putting People Back to Work Rehabilitating Homes, Businesses and Communities.
    The President is proposing to invest $15 billion in a national effort
    to put construction workers on the job rehabilitating and refurbishing
    hundreds of thousands of vacant and foreclosed homes and businesses.
    Building on proven approaches to stabilizing neighborhoods with high
    concentrations of foreclosures, Project Rebuild will bring in expertise
    and capital from the private sector, focus on commercial and residential
    property improvements, and expand innovative property solutions like
    land banks. This approach will not only create construction jobs but
    will help reduce blight and crime and stabilize housing prices in areas
    hardest hit by the housing crisis.
  • Expanding Access to High-Speed Wireless in a Fiscally Responsible Way: The
    President is calling for a deficit reducing plan to deploy high-speed
    wireless services to at least 98 percent of Americans, including those
    in more remote rural communities, while freeing up spectrum through
    incentive auctions, spurring innovation, and creating a nationwide,
    interoperable wireless network for public safety.

Pathways Back to Work for Americans Looking for Jobs 

  • Reform Our Unemployment Insurance System to Provide Greater Flexibility, While Ensuring 6 Million People Do Not Lose Benefits:
    Drawing on the best ideas of both parties and the most innovative
    states, the President is proposing the most sweeping reforms to the
    unemployment insurance (UI) system in 40 years help those without jobs
    transition to the workplace. Alongside these reforms, the President is
    reiterating his call to extend unemployment insurance, preventing 6
    million people looking for work from losing their benefits and extending
    what the independent Congressional Budget Office has determined is the
    highest “bang for the buck” option to increase economic activity.
  • Reemployment Assistance: States will be required to
    design more rigorous reemployment services for the long-term unemployed
    and to conduct assessments to review the longest-term claimants of UI to
    assess their eligibility and help them develop a work-search plan.
    These reforms are proven to speed up UI beneficiaries’ return to work.
  • Work-sharing:The President will expand “work-sharing”
    to encourage arrangements using UI that keep employees on the job at
    reduced hours, rather than laying them off.
  • State Flexibility for Bold Reforms to Put the Long-Term Unemployed Back To Work:The
    President is proposing to provide additional funds to allow states to
    introduce new programs aimed at long-term unemployed workers, including:
  • “Bridge to Work” Programs:States will be able to put
    in place reforms that build off what works in programs like Georgia
    Works or Opportunity North Carolina, while instituting important fixes
    and reforms that ensure minimum wage and fair labor protections are
    being enforced.  These approaches permits long-term unemployed workers
    to continue receiving UI while they take temporary, voluntary work or
    pursue work-based training. The President’s plan requires compliance
    with applicable minimum wage and other worker rights laws.
  • Wage Insurance:  States will be able to use UI to
    encourage older, long-term unemployed Americans to return to work in new
    industries or occupations.
  • Startup Assistance:  States will have flexibility to help long-term unemployed workers create their own jobs by starting their own small businesses.
  • Other Reemployment Reforms:  States will be able to
    seek waivers from the Secretary of Labor to implement other innovative
    reforms to connect the long-term unemployed to work opportunities.
  • Tax Credits for Hiring the Long-Term Unemployed:The President is proposing a tax credit of up to $4,000 for hiring workers who have been looking for a job for over six months.
  • Investing in Low-Income Youth and Adults: The
    President is proposing a new Pathways Back to Work Fund to provide
    hundreds of thousands of low-income youth and adults with opportunities
    to work and to achieve needed training in growth industries. The
    Initiative will do three things: i) support summer and year-round jobs
    for youth, building off of successful programs that supported over
    370,000 such jobs in 2009 and 2010; ii) support subsidized employment
    opportunities for low-income individuals who are unemployed, building
    off the successful TANF Emergency Contingency Fund wage subsidy program
    that supported 260,000 jobs in 2009 and 2010; and iii) support promising
    and innovative local work-based job and training initiatives to place
    low-income adults and youths in jobs quickly.
  • Prohibiting Employers from Discriminating Against Unemployed Workers:
    The President’s plan calls for legislation that would make it unlawful
    to refuse to hire applicants solely because they are unemployed or to
    include in a job posting a provision that unemployed persons will not be
    considered.

 More Money in the Pockets of Every American Worker and Family

  •  Cutting Payroll Taxes in Half for 160 Million Workers Next Year: The
    President’s plan will expand the payroll tax cut passed last December
    by cutting workers payroll taxes in half next year. This provision will
    provide a tax cut of $1,500 to the typical family earning $50,000 a
    year. As with the payroll tax cut passed in December 2010, the American
    Jobs Act will specify that Social Security will still receive every
    dollar it would have gotten otherwise, through a transfer from the
    General Fund into the Social Security Trust Fund.
  • Helping More Americans Refinance Mortgages at Today’s Historically Low Interest Rates: The
    President has instructed his economic team to work with Fannie Mae and
    Freddie Mac, their regulator the FHFA, major lenders and industry
    leaders to remove the barriers that exist in the current refinancing
    program (HARP) to help more borrowers benefit from today’s historically
    low interest rates. This has the potential to not only help these
    borrowers, but their communities and the American taxpayer, by keeping
    borrowers in their homes and reducing risk to Fannie Mae and Freddie
    Mac. 

Fully Paid for as Part of the President’s Long-Term Deficit Reduction Plan. 

  • To ensure that the American Jobs Act is fully paid for, the President
    will call on the Joint Committee to come up with additional deficit
    reduction necessary to pay for the Act and still meet its deficit
    target. The President will, in the coming days, release a detailed plan
    that will show how we can do that while achieving the additional deficit
    reduction necessary to meet the President’s broader goal of stabilizing
    our debt as a share of the economy.

 

$, bn
Tax Cuts to Help America’s Small Businesses Hire and Grow

70
Cut employer payroll taxes in half & bonus payroll cut for new jobs/wages

65
Extend 100% expensing in 2012

5
Putting Workers Back on the Job While Rebuilding and Modernizing America

140
Teacher rehiring and first responders

35
Modernizing schools

30
Immediate surface transportation

50
Infrastructure bank

10
Rehabilitation/repurposing of vacant property (neighborhood stabilization)

15
National wireless initiative

0*
Veterans hiring initiative

n.a.
Pathways Back to Work for Americans Looking for Jobs

62
UI Reform and Extension

49
Jobs tax credit for long term unemployed

8
Pathways back to work fund

5
More Money in the Pockets of Every American Worker and Family

175
Cutting employee payroll taxes in half in 2012

175
TOTAL

447

* Proposal has a gross cost of $10bn, but a net deficit reducing impact of $18bn because of spectrum auction proceeds.

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Cleaner Air and a Stronger Economy – A Record of Success


posted by Heather
Zichal on September 02, 2011 at 10:30 AM EDT

White House blog

Over the last two and a half years, the Obama Administration has taken
unprecedented steps forward to protect the public health of American families by
reducing harmful air pollution.  Taken together, the Administration’s clean air
achievements will produce enormous benefits for public health and the
environment – while promoting the nation’s continued economic growth and
well-being.

Clean Air: An Investment in Health, the Environment, and the Economy

Clean air is critical to protecting public health and the environment and the
evidence shows that it’s a good investment.  A recent report by the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) shows that the direct benefits of the Clean
Air Act – in the form of cleaner air and healthier, more productive
Americans – are estimated to reach nearly $2 trillion in the year 2020,
exceeding the costs by a factor of more than 30 to one.  These benefits are
ultimately about the health of our families.

According to the report, in 2010 alone, the reductions in fine particle and
ozone pollution from the Clean Air Act prevented:

  • 160,000 premature deaths;
  • More than 80,000 emergency room visits;
  • Millions of cases of respiratory problems;
  • Millions of lost workdays, increasing
    productivity;
  • Millions of lost school days due to respiratory
    illness and other diseases caused or exacerbated by air pollution.

The Obama Administration’s Record of Achievement

Doubling fuel efficiency for cars and light duty trucks:
Shortly after taking office, President Obama directed the EPA and the
Department of Transportation (DOT)to set joint fuel efficiency standards and
greenhouse gas standards for cars and light-duty trucks built in 2012-2016.
These groundbreaking standards, finalized in April 2010, will raise fuel
efficiency to 35.5 mpg and begin saving families money at the pump this year.
In July 2011, the President announced the next
round of standards, for Model Years 2017 – 2025, which will require
performance equivalent to 54.5 mpg or 163 grams/ mile of CO2 for cars and
light-duty trucks by Model Year 2025.  Together, the Administration’s programs
for cars and light duty trucks represent the first meaningful update to fuel
efficiency standards in three decades and will save American families $1.7
trillion dollars in fuel costs, and by 2025 result in an average fuel savings of
over $8,000 per vehicle.  Additionally, these programs will dramatically cut the
oil we consume, saving a total of 12 billion barrels of oil, and by 2025 reduce
oil consumption by 2.2 million barrels a day.  Achieving our efficiency goals
will also secure demand for innovative technologies and manufacturing that will
spur economic growth and create high-quality domestic jobs in cutting edge
industries across America.

First-ever standards for medium and heavy-duty trucks:  In
addition to historic rules for light-duty vehicles, the Administration has
announced the first-ever
fuel economy standards for medium- and heavy-duty trucks.  Under the
comprehensive new national program, trucks and buses built in 2014 through 2018
will reduce oil consumption by a projected 530 million barrels and greenhouse
gas (GHG) pollution by approximately 270 million metric tons.  The standards are
expected to yield an estimated $50 billion in net benefits over the life of
model year 2014 to 2018 vehicles, resulting in significant long-terms savings
for vehicle owners and operators.

Cutting pollution from power plants and industrial sources:
EPA finalized additional Clean Air Act protections that will slash
hundreds of thousands of tons of smokestack emissions that travel long distances
through the air leading to soot and smog, threatening the health of hundreds of
millions of Americans living downwind. The Cross-State
Air Pollution Rule will reduce air pollution (including ozone) and is
projected to prevent up to 34,000 deaths annually, producing annual estimated
net benefits in excess of $100 billion. Twenty seven states in the eastern half
of the country will work with power plants to cut air pollution under the rule,
which leverages widely available, proven and cost-effective control
technologies. Many power plants covered by the rule have already made
substantial investments in clean air technologies to reduce SO2 and
NOx emissions.

First national standard to reduce mercury and other toxic air
pollution from power plants: Power plants are the largest remaining
source of several toxic air pollutants – responsible for half of mercury and
more than half of acid gas emissions in the United States. In the power sector
alone, coal-fired power plants are responsible for 99 percent of mercury
emissions. In March of 2011, the Administration proposed new power plant mercury
and air toxics standards to cut harmful emissions of mercury, arsenic,
chromium, nickel and acid gases, preventing as many as 18,000 premature deaths
and 11,000 heart attacks a year. These proposed standards would also prevent up
to 5,300 hospitalizations for respiratory and cardiovascular diseasesand up to
860,000 days of work missed due to illness.  The total health and economic
benefits of this standard in 2016 would be up to $130 billion. In addition, the
Administration is putting in place standards to reduce toxic pollution from
cement plants, oil and gas extraction, and industrial boilers – steps which will
provide large public health benefits for communities across the country.

Reducing harmful air pollution by expanding cleaner alternatives and
increasing efficiency:  The Recovery Act included over $90 billion for
clean energy – the largest single clean energy investment in American
history. This funding supported programs that created over 224,500 American jobs
and tens of thousands of domestic renewable energy projects through programs
like the successful “1603” renewable energy grant program – which was
successfully extended for a year as part of the December 2010 compromise tax
agreement.  Thanks to these concerted efforts, we are on track to double
renewable energy generation by 2012.

The Administration has also demonstrated a commitment to efficiency, both in
the transportation sector and in the built environment. This includes
implementing more rigorous energy efficiency standards for commercial and
residential appliances, including microwaves, kitchen ranges, dishwashers, light
bulbs and other common appliances, and supporting building retrofits. The
Recovery Through Retrofit program is eliminating key barriers in the home
retrofit industry and the Better Buildings Initiative for commercial buildings
is striving to make this sector 20 percent more efficient by 2020.

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