Modernizing our schools and universities – creating green jobs  

• Invests $20 billion to modernize schools and colleges, including facility repairs, updating technology, and making facilities more energy-efficient. According to estimates, this will create more than 200,000 new jobs in the construction, energy, technology, and other industries.
• Includes $25 million to help charter schools build, obtain and repair schools.
  

Investing in early education

• Provides $2.1 billion for Head Start, and Early Head Start, which provides comprehensive development services for low-income preschool children, infants and toddlers. These investments will create thousands of new jobs, increasing demand for early educators, transportation and nutrition providers, and more.

Helping states prevent teacher layoffs and other critical public sector jobs

• Provides $79 billion state stabilization fund to help prevent education-related layoffs and restore harmful cuts to education funding, including $25 billion for states and local governments to meet needs in public safety, health and other critical public services.  

Training workers for 21st century jobs

• Provides $4 billion to prepare adult and dislocated workers for green jobs, younger Americans and other emerging industries, including training for retrofitting buildings, green construction and production of renewable energy.
• Includes $1.6 billion to create up to one million summer jobs for younger Americans
  

 
Creating service and volunteer opportunities to rebuild America

• Creates work study opportunities for an additional 200,000 college students in a field related to either their major or community service.
• Invest $200 million for 16,000 new slots in Americorps which will create more opportunities for more Americans of all generations to serve in their communities.
  

Support for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act…

“School construction projects will generate jobs in the construction industry and among the many suppliers, ranging from architects and engineers to roofing contractors and other workers who design and build our nation’s schools.”
-- Robert Canavan, Chair, Rebuild America’s Schools

“These provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will help to alleviate hardship for those most vulnerable, and in so doing, foster economic growth.”
-- Wade Henderson, President and CEO, Leadership Council on Civil Rights

Witnesses:

Panel 1:

Hon. Charles E. F. Millard
Director of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation

Panel 2:

Jared Bernstein
Director of the Living Standards Program
Economic Policy Institute

Ron Blackwell
Chief Economist
AFL-CIO

Christopher Hansen
President and CEO
AeA (formerly the American Electronics Association)

Robert Pollin
Professor of Economics
Founding Co-Director of the Political Economy Research Institute
University of  Massachusetts at Amherst

Dana Stevens
Unemployed Worker
Thorofare, New Jersey

William W. Beach
Director
Center for Data Analysis
The Heritage Foundation

Though the Department is required to conduct audits of applications submitted to ensure against fraud, the OIG found that the Department actually discontinued some types of audits nearly three years ago. Additionally, the OIG found that the Department did not even audit many applications which had been selected for either random or targeted audits.

The OIG concluded:
“The effect of [the DOL] not auditing applications selected for audit is that fraudulent or non-meritorious applications may have been certified. Certifying non-eligible foreign workers could negatively affect the U.S. workforce by reducing the amount of jobs available for U.S. workers.”

Chairman Miller's letter to Secretary Chao states:
“The OIG report demonstrates that your Department has failed to properly implement the Program Electronic Review Management (PERM), a program that is similar to one you propose in the H-2A and H-2B regulations. Thus, we worry that the Bush Administration scheme for the H-2A and H-2B programs could lead to more fraudulent or non-meritorious requests for temporary foreign guest workers, at the expense of U.S. workers, with little risk of detection.”

Note: Sensitive information has been redacted from the OIG report.

“The credit crisis and stock market crash is making an already dire unemployment situation worse,” Chairman Miller said.  “The top economists who have briefed the Democratic leadership today and over the last few weeks all agree that unemployment is going to continue to rise.  We are going to examine the best ways to get Americans back to work and put our economy on the road to recovery.

“The emergency financial bill we approved late last month was one important step toward rescuing the economy, but we knew then that additional, comprehensive measures would be needed to help stabilize and heal our broken economy.  We need a longer-term economic recovery plan that will create jobs, grow the economy, and protect Main Street. These hearings will be vital to our efforts to develop a plan that rebuilds our economy while protecting taxpayers and helping workers and their families seize the opportunities that our 21st century economy presents.”

The hearing is expected to take place late next week.  The exact date and location will be announced later.  Last week, Chairman Miller announced a second hearing on how the financial crisis is impacting workers’ retirement savings, on Wednesday, October 22 in San Francisco.  He held a hearing on this topic last Tuesday as part of a series of hearings House Democrats are conducting to look at the causes of the financial crisis and appropriate responses to it.

America’s working families are hurting, and in need of real solutions to get our economy back on track. For starters, we must extend unemployment benefits for hundreds of thousands of out-of-work Americans whose current benefits are set to expire this weekend. Today, as the House considers a financial rescue plan to protect the credit that small businesses and families rely on, we will also vote to extend unemployment benefits to help workers cover their bills while looking for a new job.

But workers also need a long-term strategy to generate new jobs. Last week, the House passed a much-needed stimulus that would create millions of good-paying jobs by investing in our crumbling infrastructure – an investment that would get our nation back to work and prevent our economy from falling deeper into recession. Unfortunately for American families, Senate Republicans blocked the package.

This latest news underscores the urgent need to ease the pain of America’s working families and get our economy on the road to recovery.