President Obama's jobs bill will jump-start hiring

By Money Matters Editors

President Obama Tuesday proposed using a portion of the surplus TARP bank bailout money to fund infrastructure spending, tax credits, and related small business credits, all aimed at creating jobs, Bloomberg News reported.

We at Money Matters heartily agree. There is an enormous amount of work that needs to be done in these United States, and millions of skilled professionals and semi-skilled workers who are willing to do it: more than 7.6 million Americans have lost their jobs in the recession that started in December 2007.

Consider the following: the U.S. must rebuild its electric grid to make it fast, efficient, and capable of handling the giga-power needs of this century. Hundreds of airports need to be upgraded and improved; ditto for the nation’s rail network, including AMTRAK. Countless bridges have to be rebuilt, expanded, or maintained. Thousands of miles of highways and roads need to be repaved. Also, the hundreds of hospitals need to be upgraded, expanded and made capable of handling the needs of an aging population. And hundreds of thousands of schools and government buildings have to be modernized, made more energy-efficient, and expanded: in particular, school classrooms for science and technology must be modernized to train the engineers and scientists of the 21st century.

In sum, there is no shortage of worthy projects: if $150-175 billion in TARP funds can be allocated to begin the process of rebuilding America, that’s a sufficient start.

And, in the process, it will create millions of new, good-paying jobs – exactly what the U.S. economy needs.

Moving forward, the private sector must resume its job creation role to create a thriving U.S. economy with ample opportunities, but the Obama administration’s jobs bill can prime-the-pump, as FDR used to say.