Why Floridians Need the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

By Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz

America is facing its greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression. The signs are everywhere and Americans from all walks of life are feeling the impact. A staggering 2.6 million American jobs were lost in the last year of the Bush Administration — the culmination of a failed economic approach — one that also nearly doubled our national debt in eight years while at the same time reducing real wages by $1,000 for the average American family.

But it’s not too late to change course and that is why my colleagues and I worked with President Obama to pass The Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act last month.

Our legislation creates and saves 3 to 4 million jobs with 90 percent created in the private sector. It rebuilds America’s infrastructure, will make us more globally competitive and energy independent, and transforms our economy for long-term growth.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan will create jobs and grow the economy by:

• Quickly investing in the economy – with 75 percent of these job creating investments entering the economy in the next 18 months.
• Doubling renewable energy production, putting people to work in the short term and freeing us from our dependence on foreign oil in the long term.
• Rebuilding our crumbling roads, bridges, and schools, and bringing high speed Internet to every community so rural and inner city businesses can link up to the global economy.
• Saving both money and lives by updating and computerizing our health care system to cut red tape, prevent medical mistakes, and help reduce health care costs by billions of dollars each year.
• Investing in research and development to secure America’s role as a world leader in a competitive global economy.
• We will protect vital services like law enforcement, education, health care and nutrition assistance for families who now find they are struggling to make ends meet.
• And, we will help those who have been hurt the most by the economic crisis by extending unemployment benefits, increasing food stamp benefits and making it easier for those who lose their job to keep their health insurance.

Here in Florida, the plan will dramatically help to turn our economy around.

The Child Tax Credit provision of the legislation, which provides for a tax credit of up to $1,000 per child, would help 816,000 children in Florida alone.

Tax relief for working families was an important component of this package. Roughly 6.5 million of Florida’s taxpayers will receive tax relief of up to $500 per person, or $1,000 per working family.

The State of Florida will also receive $3.5 billion in federal fiscal stabilization funds by 2010 so that our state can stabilize the budget and minimize the number of cuts to employees, programs and funding for state projects.

For Floridians who are already struggling, the legislation directs an additional $879 million in food stamp benefits for the 1.6 million Floridians currently receiving food stamp assistance. It also provides $4.25 billion in assistance through 2010 for state Medicaid payments.

This recovery package makes bold investments to invest in our children with a 21st century education. In Florida, this means $3.5 billion to prevent teacher layoffs and other cutbacks in education and other key services while also rebuilding and modernizing our schools. It will also make college more affordable with improved Pell Grants for the nearly 400,000 Pell Grant recipients here in Florida and a higher education tax credit for an additional 195,000 students in our state so that they can stay in college despite these tough times.

The recovery package makes large investments to repair and modernize thousands of miles of roadways in the U.S., provides new mass transit options for millions of Americans, and invests in clean water infrastructure. For Florida, this will provide $2 billion to invest in these key infrastructure projects that are ready to go and will begin to create jobs for Floridians right away.

Our plan has unprecedented accountability measures built in — providing strong oversight and a historic degree of public transparency including a dedicated Web site, www.recovery.gov, which will allow citizens to track every penny and hold officials accountable for performance. This legislation does not contain any earmarked projects (i.e.: projects requested by a specific Member.)

This package will make our economy and infrastructure stronger than it would be without any action. It will save or create an estimated 329,550 jobs here in Florida by the end of 2010 and reduce our unemployment rate by 2.4 percent.

It will take time to turn this economy around, but we are confident that if Americans work together, we can overcome the economic crisis, just as we have overcome other great challenges in our nation’s past.