Obama team eyes green jobs, insulated homes

Part of the stimulus budget..........
To provide home energy efficiency.........
To provide more jobs........
To help the people have their lives back.........
By providing new job opportunities.......

Obama team eyes green jobs, insulated homes
$16 billion weatherization plan unveiled at middle class task force meeting

President Barack Obama's task force on middle-class issues began its work Friday with a panel discussion on green jobs — and an announcement that the energy and housing departments would work together to spend $16 billion to weatherize homes and create a green industry for home energy efficiency.
Vice President Joe Biden, who chairs the task force, called the weatherization plan a "historic partnership to create thousands of jobs in the retro-fitting and weatherization industry."
The Energy and Housing and Urban Development departments agreed to coordinate home weatherization spending provided by the $787 economic stimulus bill that Obama signed last week.

HUD said it would put up $4.5 billion to renovate and upgrade public housing. The Energy Department will invest $5 billion in weatherization funds; $3.2 billion for a new Energy and Environment Block Grant that cities and states can use to retrofit homes; and $3.1 billion for a program that states can tap into.

The task force also heard from experts on the potential to create and fill green jobs.
Broadly defined as related to improving the environment, green jobs pay up to 20 percent more than other jobs, are more likely to be union jobs and likelier held by men, less so by minorities and city dwellers, according to a task force staff report released at Friday's meeting in Philadelphia at the University of Pennsylvania. Green jobs also are largely domestic jobs that cannot be shipped overseas.

$11 billion for smart grid

The $787 billion economic stimulus bill Obama signed last week includes billions to help create such jobs as installing solar panels and building wind turbines, which also is part of his goal to nudge the country away from dependence on foreign oil and toward reliance on renewable forms of energy.

Among the provisions: $11 billion for investments in a smart grid to create more than 3,000 miles of new or modernized high-tech transmission lines; $6 billion for a loan guarantee program to encourage banks to finance green investments; and $500 million for a "green job" training program to be run by the Department of Labor.

It is Obama's belief that such jobs will help raise living standards for middle-class families, who didn't fare well before the current economic downturn set in and are now feeling pinched along with millions of other people who have lost their jobs and homes, and watched retirement and college savings disappear.

Obama announced the panel last month at the White House. Its purpose is to recommend ways to boost the nation's middle class. It also will evaluate new and existing policies to determine whether they are helping or hurting the middle class.

"Quite simply, a strong middle class equals a strong America. We can't have one without the other," Biden said at the time. "It is our charge to get the middle class, the backbone of this country, up and running again."