CAREER OUTLOOK
U.S. Senate Passes Jobs Bill to Help Veterans
Thursday before Veterans Day, the Senate passed a jobs bill that claims to offer help for veterans who are seeking employment. The House is expected to deal with the bill next week. Of all of President Obama’s jobs initiatives, the House will have a hard time excusing itself from passing a bill that will help returning war veterans to gain employment. But some sources are working on that excuse right now. According to Paxalles, Senator Jim De Mint called the bill “inherently unfair”, stating that “I’ll probably get accused of not support- ing veterans by the politicians pandering for their votes, but I’m not going to be intimidated into voting for something that may make sense politically but is inherently unfair and isn’t going to work,”
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“I’m thankful for their sacrifices to protect equal opportunities and freedom in America,” he said. “But we don’t pay them back for their service and sacrifice with false promises of pro- grams that have proven not to work.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell griped that the bill would not solve America’s jobs crisis and politicized the issue by stating “... this attempt at bipartisanship has been used to help get them over the finish line and represents our best shot at making progress on jobs in the economy.”
CNN Money reports that the bill will also help federal contractors who are claiming pain from “tax burdens”. The federal contractors will get a break for one of two options. There will be $5,600 for hiring veterans who have been unemployed for longer than six months. A tax credit of up to $9,600 would be handed over for hiring long-unemployed disabled veterans.
About 240,000 veterans are currently out of work, which gives a 12.1% unemployment rate for those who were thanked so heavily for their service one day later on Veterans Day. This does not include veterans who were already homeless or not working because of past wars and with even more veterans on the way home from the Afghanistan theater, the situation becomes even more dire.
80 USBE&IT I WINTER 2011
ne political “third rail” is the issue of veterans who have, for years, been returning to an ex- tremely poor job market. On the
The Republicans want to tap into the fees that veterans are
charged by the VA for home mortage processing. These fees were scheduled to be lowered, but the money will now be kept as a way to help pay for the jobs bill.
This bill is strictly a tax dodge for government contractors and it does not guarantee jobs for veterans or anyone else. With a draw down in two wars, House Republican obsession with extreme political dogma or the next elections, and the resulting shutdowns and delays in working on the national infrastructure, it is unlikely that government contractors will have an overload of jobs to offer anyone.
www.blackengineer.com
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