Obama Announces New Plan to Stimulate Job Growth

Following a jobs summit last week, President Obama on Tuesday announced an initiative to stimulate job growth with a mixture of spending and tax incentives. The proposal calls for a one-year elimination of the capital gains tax, an employment tax cut for small businesses, and investment in roads, bridges and "clean" energy.

"Even though we have reduced the deluge of job losses to a relative trickle, we are not yet creating jobs at a pace to help all those families who have been swept up in the flood," Obama said, outlining the work his administration has done to soften the blow of the economic crisis and arguing for new measures to spur job growth. "There are more than 7 million fewer Americans with jobs today than when this recession began."

Obama blamed Republicans for their opposition to the recovery and stimulus legislation he pushed through Congress earlier this year, hinting that GOP opposition had prevented the measures from having the greatest effect. "We were forced to take those steps largely without the help of an opposition party which, unfortunately, after having presided over the decision-making that led to the crisis, decided to hand it over to others to solve."

Most of the provisions in the new proposal involve expanding and extending key parts of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed in February.