FACT SHEET: President Obama’s Agenda for Creating Economic Opportunity for Millennials
Federal Information & News Dispatch, Inc. |
A copy of the related report released by the President's
Last week,
Millennials came of age during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. In the face of these challenges,
There are still challenges to meet, but no generation has been better equipped to overcome them than Millennials. They're skilled with technology and more educated than any previous generation. Today's
To build on this progress, there is also a path forward. Acting with
Making Higher Education More Affordable for Millennials: While college is more important than ever before, it is also more expensive.
*Increasing federal financial support for higher education. Higher education can be a pathway to the middle class for many people, but we have to ensure that students are able to afford this investment.
*Creating the American Opportunity Tax Credit worth up to
*Increasing Pell Grant scholarships by
*Eliminating wasteful bank subsidies and passing along those savings to help more Americans afford college.
*Making student loan payments more affordable.
Supporting Innovation: Millennials are more connected to technology than previous generations, both in school and in work, and their innovations in this area have the potential to impact all workers through our economy for years to come. The President's policies have supported innovation that helps students learn and entrepreneurs create new businesses.
*Digital Literacy for the Tech Generation. The President's policies are creating new opportunity for a nation where life and livelihood will demand digital literacy. The ConnectED Initiative is transforming education by connecting every school to high-speed broadband and wireless, with over
*Empowering Innovation: The President has been actively working to make sure that patent trolls, who use vague and misleading threats of lawsuits to extort money from young companies, do not strangle American technological innovation. He is driving an agenda that has reformed how and when the government issues patents to improve their quality, limited abuse of certain trade courts to hold up new innovations, and continues to call on
*Unlocking Consumer Choice: The President is also working to make sure that consumers have real flexibility when it comes to choosing technologies, and how they use them - like unlocking cell phones to use them with the mobile network that meets your needs. The Administration called last year to restore and safeguard this common-sense freedom, and this August, signed that bill into law.
Creating Opportunity and Supporting Good-Paying Middle-Class Jobs: Upon taking office,
*Supporting Equal Pay. The disparity in pay between women and men doesn't just affect women's financial well-being; it affects families and the nation's overall economic health. The first bill
*Increasing the Minimum Wage:
*Expanding Tax Relief for Working Families:
*Supporting Immigrants and Creating an Immigration System that Works: Millennials are more likely to be foreign-born than the previous two generations. The President has been fighting for a fair, effective and common sense immigration reform that lives up to our heritage as a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants. As that effort continues, the Administration is implementing Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) which has benefitted some 600,000 young people who were brought to this country as children by their parents, and for whom
*Investing in Infrastructure, Research and Manufacturing to Support Middle-Class Jobs: The President has proposed targeted investments in areas such as infrastructure, research and manufacturing that will both help create jobs today and lay the groundwork for stronger long-run growth. By contrast, the House Republican-passed budget would require deep cuts to early education, research, job training, clean energy and other areas that support a stronger economy.
Connecting Students and Workers with the Skills They Need for College and Career: The Administration has worked to make sure that more Millennials get the training they need for today's jobs, including by better linking secondary and post-secondary education with industry to determine skills needed and design curriculum.
*Providing Every Child with a Complete and Competitive Education: As they begin planning families of their own, the Administration is committed to building the high-quality education system Millennials and their children deserve by incentivizing investment and improvement. With Race to the Top, the Administration has brought significant change to our education system by encouraging states to raise standards and aligning policies that promote college and career readiness, improve teacher effectiveness, use data effectively in the classroom, and adopt new strategies to help struggling schools.
*Redesigning High Schools: Earlier this year, the Administration awarded
*Better Training Students through Community Colleges and Connecting Job-Seekers to Work: To support the 7.7 million community college students across the country who represent 45 percent of all undergraduates, the Administration has awarded nearly
*Expanding Access to Apprenticeships: The Administration has also been encouraging the expansion of apprenticeships as pathways to help young adults get into middle-class jobs.
*Working to "Upskill" Youth Early in Their Careers: To support youth who are starting out in their careers, the Administration has kicked off a new public-private effort -- working with employers, educators, tech innovators, unions, training providers, cities, states, and non-profits -- to help turn low-wage and entry-level jobs across the country into stepping stones to the middle class.
Increasing Access to Affordable Health Care: In addition to the direct economic consequences of the Great Recession, millions of Millennials were at risk of poor health outcomes exacerbated by unaffordable or unattainable insurance. The Affordable Care Act expanded coverage, helping millions of Americans obtain quality insurance. Yet House Republicans have voted on dozens of occasions to gut the law.
*Expanding Coverage to Age 26. Before the President signed the Affordable Care Act into law, most health plans kicked young people off when they turned 19 or graduated from college, leaving many college graduates and others with no insurance. Now, most health plans that cover children must make coverage available up to age 26, making it easier and more affordable for young adults to get coverage.
*Providing Preventive Care for Free. The Affordable Care Act requires most insurers to cover preventive care services without copays and deductibles. This means that, for the first time, important preventive services -- including birth control -- are available at no cost to millions of consumers who have private health insurance.
*Providing Affordable Health Care Coverage. Young Americans often have the least access to employer sponsored health care plans, which previously left many without any reasonably priced insurance opportunities.
Supporting Access to Credit for First-Time Homebuyers and
*Making It Easier For Americans to Obtain Affordable Mortgage Financing Payments through the
*
*Protecting the Financial Well-Being of Consumers through Wall Street Reform. Through Wall Street Reform, the Administration has created the strongest consumer protections in history while reducing American taxpayer exposure to future crises.
Copyright: | (c) 2011 Federal Information & News Dispatch, Inc. |
Wordcount: | 2310 |
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