DeLauro Lauds Passage of Jobs Bill

Washington, DC – Congresswoman Rosa L. DeLauro (CT -3) today praised the passage of the Jobs for Main Street Act, H.R. 2847, which will create and preserve jobs throughout the country with targeted investments in infrastructure, schools, local law enforcement and firefighters, small businesses, job training, and affordable housing. It will also provide emergency relief to Americans who are struggling during this economic depression. These initiatives will be funded by redirecting Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds.

The Jobs for Main Street Act will provide $48 billion dollars worth of funding for highways, transit, and other infrastructure projects, which will create tens of thousands of jobs while restoring our nation's highways, school buildings, and rehabilitating rental homes and public housing. Additional funding will be provided for small businesses, who have been among the hardest hit in the recent recession. The bill will eliminate fees on Small Business Administration (SBA) loans, make lending to small businesses more attractive to banks by increasing the percentage of a loan the SBA will guarantee.

This legislation will also direct $27 billion worth of funding to the hiring, retention, and training of school teachers, local law enforcement officers, and firefighters. Included in these initiatives is support for 25,000 AmeriCorps volunteers, 250,000 youth summer jobs, 250,000 college work study jobs, and job training for 150,000 people in industries with high growth potential, such as health care and clean energy.

Families hit by the recession will also benefit from this bill, which provides $79 billion of emergency relief. These funds will extended unemployment insurance, extend COBRA health insurance benefits, protect Medicaid by providing matching funds to states for and additional six months, and making the Child Tax Credit available to all low-income working families with children in 2010.

Congresswoman DeLauro said, "We have now seen 23 straight months of job losses. This means families under huge stress, hungry children, a lost generation of American workers.  We owed a response to those families contending with joblessness and the financial havoc it wreaks on their lives. This bill was not only the moral thing to do – it was our obligation as legislators and as citizens. It is time to put this TARP money to work where it always belonged – in the hands of the American people. I am pleased that my colleagues supported this bill, and urge all of us to work together in the year to come on legislation that will retain and create more American jobs. We need to get America back to work."