President Barack Obama on Friday will ramp up his efforts to help unemployed veterans find jobs by calling for $6 billion in spending aimed at service members returning home from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, administration officials said.
At the Arlington, Va., firehouse that sent the first emergency responders to the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, Obama will propose an initiative that the administration says could put 20,000 veterans in jobs that preserve national parks and other public land. He also will call on Congress to increase funding in fiscal 2013 for programs that help communities hire police and firefighters.
Continue Reading?Our freedom endures because of the men and women in uniform who defend it. As they come home, we must serve them as well as they?ve served us,? Obama said in his State of the Union address last week, echoing a theme that he stressed last fall as he urged Congress to pass pieces of his American Jobs Act aimed at helping veterans find jobs. ?That includes giving them the care and the benefits they have earned. ? And it means enlisting our veterans in the work of rebuilding our nation.?
Among the few pieces of Obama?s jobs bill that Congress passed are measures introducing tax credits for employers that hire veterans ? up to $5,600 for hiring unemployed veterans and as much as $9,600 for hiring long-term unemployed veterans with disabilities related to their service.
On Friday, Obama will propose the creation of a Veterans Jobs Corps conservation program that would use $1 billion over five years to help as many as 20,000 veterans find work preserving and restoring federal, state, local and tribal lands.
He also will include $4 billion in his fiscal 2013 budget to expand the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) grant program and $1 billion more for a fire and emergency response program. Obama first proposed additional funding for these initiatives in his jobs bill.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who represented Colorado in the Senate until he was appointed to his current post, said Thursday that he sees the measures as likely to win support from his former colleagues on Capitol Hill.
?I think that there is great bipartisan support for our veterans,? he told reporters on a conference call previewing the president?s announcement. ?We expect the Congress to act. ? These are common-sense initiatives that take care of our 9/11 veterans who have served our country and are coming home.?
Not all of what Obama will announce requires congressional approval. He will instruct the COPS and emergency response grant programs to give preference to communities that plan to hire post-9/11 veterans. Funding available for the police program totals $166 million for the rest of fiscal 2012, while the emergency response program has $320 million in grants to award.
Obama is also announcing the expansion of entrepreneurship training initiatives that help retiring members of the military find civilian jobs.
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