WASHINGTON: Faced with a dismal double-digit unemployment rate, US President Barack Obama has outlined a broad range of job creation ideas aimed to accelerate job growth.

These include the reduction of small business tax, funding for infrastructure and incentives for clean energy investment.

"Those are areas that will generate the greatest number of jobs while generating the greatest value for our economy," Obama said at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC on Tuesday.

Citing the fact that small businesses created some 65 percent of all new jobs in the US in the last 15 years, Obama said it's important to help small business struggling to open, or stay open, to get loans and to hire new staff during the current economic difficulties.

"I am asking my Treasury Secretary to continue mobilizing the remaining TARP funds to facilitate lending to small businesses," he said.

TARP, which stands for Troubled Assets Relief Program, refers to the bailout fund from the US government started a year ago, during the Bush administration, to purchase assets and equity from financial institutions to strengthen the financial sector amid a worsening subprime mortgage crisis.

Obama also said he and his team have proposed a boost in investment in the nation's infrastructure beyond what was included in the Recovery Act to continue modernizing the transportation and communications networks.

He said adding to this initiative to rebuild America's infrastructure is the right thing to do. "The need for jobs will also last beyond next year and the benefits of these investments will last years beyond that," Obama said.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has frequently cited the inadequate infrastructure in the US in comparison to many modern facilities in many Asian cities, such as the Hong Kong new airport versus many old US airports.

On clean energy, Obama said he is calling on Congress to consider a new program to provide incentives for consumers who retrofit their homes to become more energy efficient.

Obama believes this effort will also create jobs, save money for families, and reduce the pollution that threatens the environment, saying that "the nation which leads the clean energy will lead the world and we want the United States to be that nation."

"Small business, infrastructure, clean energy: these are areas in which we can put Americans to work while putting our nation on a sturdier economic footing," said Obama, who took office 10 months ago, inheriting two wars, a mounting deficit and a worsening economic crisis.

Obama's proposals on Tuesday also came 10 month after he signed into law a $787 billion stimulus plan to boost the US economy. While the program has helped halt the slide in the overall economic growth, the unemployment rate has continued to remain around 10 percent, the highest level in some 25 years. A total of 7 million Americans have lost jobs since the crisis began two years ago, according to Obama.

The US president, eyeing the nation's $12 trillion debt burden, said the administration will be prudent about how to fund the program.

In the US Congress, where many of Obama's funding proposals have yet to be approved, some Democrats want to use the saved and repaid TARP money, about $200 billion in total, to fund job creations, while many Republicans want to use it to reduce deficits.

Gary Burtless, a Senior Fellow and The John C. and Nancy D. Whitehead Chair at the Brookings, told China Daily that he still wants to know how big the efforts are and how much resources are available.

"The program could put lots of the unemployed but skilled workers in construction and other sectors back to work," he said.

Isabel Sawhill, also a Senior Fellow of Economic Studies at the Brookings, said Obama laid out an ambitious although targeted second round of stimulus.

She said with unemployment at 10 percent and projected to remain high for several more years at least, "we need government spending and tax cuts to fill the gap until the private sector recovers."

Sawhill rejects the criticism that Obama's efforts would add to the deficit. "The solution to the deficit problem is to enact measures now that will only kick in once the economy is back to normal.

(China Daily 12/10/2009 page11)