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 Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Russ Feingold is urging President Obama to address deficit reduction and job creation in his upcoming State of the Union address. Feingold has made controlling government spending and job creation two of his top legislative priorities for 2010. To address skyrocketing federal deficits, Feingold recently introduced the Control Spending Now Act, legislation made up of more than 40 proposals to reduce the deficit by about one half trillion dollars. In a letter to the president, Feingold acknowledged that President Obama had inherited perhaps “the worst domestic economic mess” since the Great Depression and stated the importance of putting the government’s fiscal policies on a sustainable course.
“This is essential not only for our long-term fiscal health, but also to bolster the efforts we make in the short term to spur economic growth,” Feingold wrote. With job creation a top priority, Feingold is advancing a jobs tax credit proposal, which would provide firms a tax credit for expanding their payroll through hiring more people, raising pay, or just expanding hours of work. Feingold has called the jobs tax credit an important part of any comprehensive approach to boosting the nation’s employment. “Like deficit reduction, a jobs tax credit can reinforce the other steps you have taken to turn the economy around and return our nation to a more sustainable economic course,” Feingold wrote. Feingold also encouraged the president to express support for reforming the way we gather intelligence around the world as the administration works to correct deficiencies in intelligence sharing underscored by the attempted terrorist attack on Christmas Day. Feingold has introduced bipartisan legislation to help reform how our government collects this information so that we can anticipate threats on the horizon. “The dispersed threat from al Qaeda affiliates, in Yemen, the Horn of Africa, North Africa and elsewhere requires a thorough understanding not only of current plotting, but of the environments in which these affiliates are, or could be, operating,” Feingold wrote. A copy is available at http://feingold.senate.gov/pdf/ltr_011110_deficit.pdf. For more information, visit Russ Feingold Senate Web Site at: http://www.feingold.senate.gov |
