The United States must commit to developing a domestic manufacturing sector capable of meeting heightened demand for the parts, systems and components of the growing clean energy economy, a strategy that is key to ensuring that federal clean energy investments create quality, high-paying jobs in the United States. This would avoid indirectly subsidizing the growth of those activities in low-wage countries such as China that are emerging as key competitors in the race to lead the global clean energy economy.More...
Critics of the $787 billion Recovery Act complain it is not doing enough to revive the economy, but they rarely ask why the companies that are receiving stimulus contracts and grants are not hiring more people. Now one of those recipients is facing a growing controversy over its employment practices in a case that helps explain why jobs remain in short supply.More...
A war of words is raging over the impact of the Obama Administration’s $787 billion stimulus program, which is now one-year old. Conservative members of Congress are mounting a relentless assault on what they see as an abject failure, even as many of them unabashedly promote and at least implicitly take credit for individual American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) projects in their home districts.More...
By now, the drumbeat is impossible to ignore: Job, jobs, jobs. With one in 10 adults unemployed, President Obama had little choice but to highlight jobs during his Jan. 27 State of the Union address. He mentioned the term nearly 30 times during the hour-long speech.More...
It was expected that the job numbers in the latest round of Recovery Act recipient reporting that just came out would diverge from those of the previous quarter. That's because the Office of Management and Budget changed the job-counting procedure that contract and grant recipients were supposed to follow.More...
Over the weekend the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board posted the new ARRA recipient data for the fourth quarter of 2009. The first thing I checked was whether there was a repeat of the phenomenon I wrote about with the first round of data: projects that are well under way or even completed reporting zero jobs generated.More...
Some states are making dramatic improvements in websites designed to disseminate information about their share of the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), but others are still failing to make effective use of online technology to educate taxpayers about the impact of economic stimulus spending.
This is the finding of Show Us the Stimulus (Again), a report released today by Good Jobs First, a non-profit research center based in Washington, DC. It updates a similar study published by Good Jobs First last July.More...
New York, NY, January 20, 2010 - -Perhaps the most obscure aspect of the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is how it seeks to expand bond programs for public infrastructure and private economic development projects. A report released today by Good Jobs New York explains how the Recovery Act's new and expanded bond programs are facilitating economic recovery and where opportunities exist for public input.More...
Responding to criticisms such as those issued by the Coalition for an Accountable Recovery (CAR) and States for a Transparent and Accountable Recovery (STAR), the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has revised its guidance that governs how Recovery Act grant and contract recipients report on jobs.More...
Loans handed out to struggling small businesses as part of President Barack Obama's stimulus package have largely shut out minority businesses -- especially those owned by Blacks and Latinos -- according to data provided by the federal government's Small Business Administration (SBA) to New America Media (NAM).More...
