American Jobs Act for Dummies

On September 8, 2011 President Obama spoke in favor of the American Jobs Act. He makes sure we know that everything in this bill will be paid for. But what is this bill about? From this speech spawns five main points, those being cutting payroll taxes, building a transportation infrastructure, rebuilding the school infrastructure, getting veterans hired, and a tax credit for hiring from a long term unemployed percentage.

The first part of the plan is about cutting payroll taxes. The American Jobs Act would cut payroll taxes in half for small business. 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. (Fact Sheet: The American Jobs Act) This bill gives small business's a tax cut for hiring new employees or raising wages. The tax cut they receive would eliminate payroll taxes. This step would help alleviate some of the stress on the large percentage of American adults who are now working minimum wages jobs, to support their families. “The expansion of the payroll tax reduction for employees would increase deficits by $175 billion.”(President Obama’s Plan to Create Jobs Now)

Next the American Jobs Act details a plan for many new jobs. The poor state of American roads and the poor quality of the road system need to be fixed. By modernizing America's transportation system, the bill is meant to create millions of jobs for private construction crews. America has fallen behind China in terms of modern transportation, and this bill plans to help America catch up. The American Jobs Act would spend $50 billion on highway, railway, and airway transportation upgrades. This bill would give $2 billion worth of grants to develop the airports. The highways alone would receive $27 billion to be restored, repaired, and built. A bullet train project would be started with $4 billion worth of grants. This money would plan, and build a high speed railway to connect America’s large cities. (President Obama’s Plan to Create Jobs Now)

More importantly the American Jobs Act plans to rebuild American schools. By fixing the leaky roofs, the out of date science labs, and the broken down schools more jobs will open for private construction companies, and at the same time help the children. The American Jobs Act would spend a total of $30 billion over the next ten years, only on the school modernization project. Right away, it would grant $25 billion to be divided amongst the states, by population, to renovate the schools. (President Obama’s Plan to Create Jobs Now) Currently, teachers are getting laid off or wages cut. This bill plans to prevent 280,000 teacher layoffs. In section 207 of the bill, the section limits the use of certain funds received to “retain existing employees, rehire former employees, or hire new employees.”(Section by Section Analysis and Explanation of the ‘American Jobs Act of 2011) In the bill it is required for all schools receiving funds to make a report, detailing exactly how all the funds are spent. This is to keep the schools honest and responsible with their spending.(Section by Section Analysis and Explanation of the ‘American Jobs Act of 2011) This part of the American Jobs Act would spend $35 billion over the next ten years. (President Obama’s Plan to Create Jobs Now)

Right now in America there are veterans who have recently come back from the war, and cannot get a job. This bill would give a tax cut to a business for every veteran that they hire. A company would receive a tax credit worth $5,600 to $9,600 for any veteran hired. (Dupree, Jaimee) However the $9,600 is only credited for a veteran who has been unemployed for six months and has a disability or injury related to their service. All other veterans can get business’s a tax credit of $2,400 if they have been unemployed for over four weeks. If a veteran has been