Details of President Obama’s Job Act

President Obama last night unveiled the American Jobs Act, a four part proposal aiming to stimulate hiring. It included numerous tax cuts and additional stimulus spending to be paid for through recent budget agreements and through asking Congress to come up with an additional $1.5 trillion in savings by year-end. Obama urged immediate passage of the plan.

The plan includes:

Tax cuts to help America’s small businesses hire and grow:

• extending the payroll tax cut, which cuts firms’ payroll taxes in half for the first $5 million and decreases next year’s taxes to 3.1%,
• offering a complete refund of payroll taxes paid by the added expense of additional employees or increased wages to current employees, capped at $50 million in new wages,
• allowing firms to deduct the full value of new investments from their tax obligations through 2012.

Veteran hiring incentives and infrastructure reinvestments:

• Wounded Warriors Tax Credit: offering firms up to $9,600 for hiring veterans with service-connected disabilities who have been unemployed six months or longer,
• Returning Heroes Tax Credit: offering $5,600 for veterans who remain unemployed six months or longer,
• investing $35 billion to prevent teacher, police, first responders and firefighter layoffs and $30 billion for modernizing public schools,
• investing $50 billion into infrastructure and $10 billion into the National Infrastructure Bank.

Long-term unemployment relief:

• extending unemployment insurance for an additional year, costing $49 billion,
• offering a $4,000 tax credit to firms for each new hire who had been unemployed for more than six months and,
• investing $5 billion in low-income youth and adult programs.

Extending the payroll tax cut, which reduces employees’ payroll taxes in half for the next year, costing $179 billion.

The plan would reduce the deficit by making additional spending cuts, by making modest adjustments to health care programs like Medicare and Medicaid, and by reforming our tax code in a way that asks the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations to pay a higher tax rate.

See the full plan