In its first annual report released Friday, the Obama administration's middle-class task force introduced plans to address the "middle-class squeeze" in the U.S. economy.
Vice President Joe Biden, who heads the year-old task force, said that the administration's focus over the past year has been on issues including retirement security, access to affordable education, the balance of work and caregiving and the creation of jobs for middle-class workers.
To address these issues, the task force has introduced new initiatives for fiscal year 2011, such as a plan to protect retirement savings, a way to lower student loan payments and a proposal to increase a tax credit that would help with rising child care expenses.
Retirement: The retirement savings initiative would introduce new regulations to "improve the transparency and adequacy" of 401(k) savings, and employers will be required to enroll employees in a payroll-deduction IRA if the company doesn't already offer a retirement plan.
Under the same plan, the saver's credit for working families will become fully refundable and will be expanded to match 50% of the first $1,000 of a person's retirement savings for families who make up to $65,000.
"After a lifetime of employment, American workers deserve a secure retirement," the report said. "Yet for middle-class workers today, especially in the wake of the historic losses to retirement savings and housing wealth in the financial crisis, retirement seems anything but secure."
Education: In order to make college more affordable, the administration plans to make efforts to reform student lending, cap student loans, and proposes to permanently extend the American Opportunity Tax Credit, which is worth up to $2,500 per year.
Caregiving: As a way to help middle-class families handle the high costs of caregiving, the administration said it is aiming to nearly double the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit and boost funding for the Child Care and Development Fund by $1.6 billion.
Jobs: The administration's plan to protect employees and create more jobs includes passing the Employee Free Choice Act to help workers who want to form unions, and offering tax benefits to small businesses to encourage hiring.
In order to support the manufacturing sector and encourage the creation of green jobs, the administration also plans to improve the process of procuring government contracts, invest in clean energy manufacturing and infrastructure, and add $5 billion to the $2.3 billion Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credit.
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Do you think this will have an positive or negative impact on the middle class community/ the country?
ReplyDeleteI wonder a lot about where this money is going to come from. Like we have seen we have been growing our debt for a long time. I would like to think that over time this increase in government spending would boost the economy. I guess there is little else to try. Sooner or later though something has to be done about our debt. I do think that it is important that we stream line a lot of our processes. Investing in renewable energy is a very important step that we should have made a long time ago. Hopefully these new green jobs will help stimulate things.
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I also wonder where all of this money will come from. These tasks and goals listed above seem to very important to the middle class of the United States. The only hope here is that increase government spending will create economic growth. I think that the government should propose some small taxes to help cover some of these expenses. The only other is to somehow alter our government spending to help pay for some of these things. Overall, I think this will positively impact the middle class. (A)
ReplyDeleteIt is hard to say how much money would really put on those issues. Everyone knows most of people regard themselves as "middle class", they might start thinking about what kinds of benefits they will get? Especially during the recession, I wonder how the government spend this big amount of money on the "middle class". But overall this idea is positively impact to the middle class, but I just curious how it really works?
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