President Barack Obama is turning to his original supporters in his 2008 campaign — America’s young people — to garner support for his American Jobs Act.
The American Jobs Act would potentially cut taxes for working families, invest in the workforce to prevent layoffs and create incentives for small businesses to expand and hire more workers.
“We are reaching out to young people to stand with President Obama and those who support the president to make sure they are active and ask them to participate in this process and help bring about the change that young people are calling for, which is why we need to pass the American Jobs Act now,” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., said during a conference call to student reporters.
Mizzou College Democrats President Matt Tharp said he thinks this bill has a lot of changes in it, many of which are more bipartisan than others.
“Something the president said in his address to Congress, that I agree with, was every component of the bill had, in the past, been supported by Republicans and Democrats,” Tharp said. “Ultimately, I’m hoping that congress will support this bill or at least a large part of it.”
Despite popular Democratic support, many are still skeptical about the bill’s potential success.
“The first jobs bill failed, so I’m not really optimistic about it,” Mizzou College Republicans Vice President Amanda Swysgood said. “I think that the government likes to pick and choose winners in this economy and it just doesn’t work.”
Kalpen Modi, former associate director to the White House Office of Public Engagement said during the conference call that this bill demonstrates what Obama has been trying to get done.
“Whether you are graduating high school and going into college, you are in college or you are not necessarily college-bound, but in the workforce, (the American Jobs Act) is probably the pinnacle of what the president has been trying to get done,” Kalpen said.
Politicians are pushing for the immediate passing of this act due to the impact it could potentially have on the American economy as it attempts to bounce back from recession.
“It is encouraging that President Obama was willing to step outside the box and try a new approach,” Dean Baker, Center for Economic and Policy Research co-director, said in a news realease. “If the Republicans cooperate, this policy could make a big difference to millions of workers and their families.”
The newest proposal is said by Obama staff to be different than other plans to fix the economy in that it will work directly with the American people by creating jobs.
“This proposal for immediate job creation is really diametrically opposed with what Republicans would do,” Schultz said. “They just want to rely on the simple trickle-down economics that have hurt families for decades. This theory is, we’ll get jobs later if we just give a little bit more to the wealthy and to the biggest corporations now at the expense of the middle class. President Obama’s bill, the American Jobs Act, is what the American people are looking for: common sense, not controversy.”
In the bill’s early stages, the Obama administration is asking that college students get involved with the passing of the bill by contacting local politicians and showing support for the act to guarantee the availability of jobs upon graduation.
“A lot of people who graduated in May, some have jobs, some do not, know that the President’s doing everything he can,” Modi said. “I’m excited about this proposal and we are pushing really hard to make sure that it gets passed,”
The bill’s fate now rests in the hands of Congress.
“Bringing Democratic and Republican ideas together will make our country better and our future brighter, and there is no excuse for Congress not to pass it right away,” Schultz said.
