President Barack Obama has a conference call with local, state and tribal officials in the Oval Office, Sept. 9, 2011 (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
On Friday, after traveling to the University of Richmond to discuss the American Jobs Act, President Obama hosted a conference call for over 1,100 state, local and tribal officials to explain how the plan would put people back to work in communities across the country.
The President thanked the officials on the call for their ongoing support, as well as their input and ideas that helped shape the American Jobs Act through listening sessions, calls and meetings over the past month. The President then laid out his policy ideas to help create more jobs immediately, including proposals to:
- Provide $50 billion in immediate investments for highways, transit, rail and aviation;
- Provide $10 billion to create a National Infrastructure Bank;
- Invest $35 billion to prevent layoffs of up to 280,000 teachers while also keeping tens of thousands of police officers and firefighters on the job;
- Modernize at least 35,000 public schools with $25 billion in infrastructure investments and $5 billion to improve community colleges; and
- Put construction workers back on the job with $15 billion to rehabilitate and refurbish hundreds of thousands of vacant homes in communities across America.
Fonte: White House