New Hampshire Would Benefit From Obama’s Stimulus Plan
Summers
New Hampshire Union Leader
Aoife Connors
Boston University Washington News Service
Feb 4, 2009
WASHINGTON – New Hampshire families will do well under President Obama’s stimulus bill, National Economic Council director Lawrence H. Summers said Wednesday.
Some 590,000 workers and their families in the state are set to benefit from a new tax cut; worth $1,000, Summers said in a press briefing for northeastern reporters.
On the education front, he said, affordable college for 9,000 families in New Hampshire is to become a reality with the new tax credit.
In addition, National Economic Council officials said, the stimulus bill includes sufficient funds to modernize 28 schools in New Hampshire.
Summers said “the tax cut will be a credit that will be given against payroll taxes.”
He said it “will basically be given at a 12 percent rate up to the first $8,000 of family income; so if a family makes even $10,000, they will get the full $1,000 credit and the credit will also be refundable.”
This stimulus program will include the largest investment in the backbone of the American economy, Summers said, particularly “in our basic infrastructure: roads, transit, broadband, schools.”
Rep. Carol Shea-Porter (D-N.H.) said in an interview Wednesday, “I don’t like everything about it; some of it is well-intentioned but it’s not stimulus.”
She added that she was “concerned about the price tag,” and contended that that “our goal with the stimulus is to reduce unemployment rates.”
Shea-Porter said “this will happen because the stimulus money will be used for building infrastructure, and this will create jobs in New Hampshire.”
The President’s plan projects that over the next two years 16,700 jobs are to be created in New Hampshire, with the majority in the private sector, particularly in the clean energy and health care industries.
But Shea-Porter said, “We are actually hoping for 22,800 jobs.”
She added that “the stimulus is targeted at the average American; it will give people a little more money that can be spent in the community and support small businesses.”
Summers, at a press briefing Tuesday, said, “I believe this bill is imperative for our economic security and I expect the bill to be signed into law.”
He added that “the stimulus will meet the President’s promise of a tax cut for all working families; 95 percent of Americans, and represents one of the largest increases in history in support for higher education, both through an expansion in the Pell program [for college students] and in expansion in the tax credit,” Summers said.
Shea-Porter said “$38 million will be allocated to schools throughout New Hampshire.”
Nationally, Summers said, “10,000 schools will be modernized with the kind of laboratories that our kids need to compete, the kind of computer technology necessary if our young people are to grow up and succeed in the new economy.”
Affordable college for 9,000 families in New Hampshire is to become a reality with the new American Opportunity Tax Credit, Summers said. “You know I’ve been surprised by some of the criticisms. I look at increased Pell grants [which have been criticized]. And I see families that don’t have to sell their houses to send their kids to college and I see families that don’t have to cut back on other spending to send their kids to college.”
Rep. Shea-Porter said, “I am very happy about the tax credit to make college affordable; we have to protect the middle class, and it is essential that we help support these families to put their kids through college.”
Summers added that 75 percent of the bill’s funds would be spent in the next 18 months and that “a Web site will be available in which every project can be tracked.”
The $100 a month in additional jobless benefits, Shea-Porter said, would “help families buy the baby formula or pay their heat; I wish we could give more because the worse thing that could happen to a family is losing employment.”
“We are facing what is almost certainly the most severe economic crisis since the great depression,” Summers said. “Last year 2.6 million jobs were lost, the most in American history. The pace of job loss is accelerating. We inherited for the first time in our country’s history a deficit in excess of a trillion dollars this year.”
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