Congress returns, unpopular as well as divided

This week, President Obama called for more robust job creation measures in his Joint Address to Congress.  To put Americans back to work, we must make smart investments to support the jobs and industries of the future, and that is what the U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA) does across the country. As the only government agency with economic development as its sole mission, EDA leads the national bottom-up job creation and growth agenda by promoting American innovation and building strong regional economic ecosystems to accelerate long-term, sustainable economic prosperity. The agency’s investments have two major goals: creating higher-skill, living-wage jobs and attracting private capital investment. Its diverse portfolio of construction, technical assistance, finance, and investment planning assistance are designed to help communities build upon their regional assets to foster job creation and business expansion.  The agency’s work is generating real returns. Every $1 dollar in EDA grant funding is expected to leverage nearly $7 dollars worth of private investment. In FY 2010, EDA awarded investments that totaled approximately $285 million, excluding supplemental funds. Of this amount, approximately $191.5 million funded construction projects that are expected to help create or retain about 48,500 jobs and generate nearly $6 billion in private investment, according to grantee estimates at the time of the award.

In bits and pieces, manufacturing is returning to the US. Unfortunately, jobs (at least human jobs) are not returning as well. For a case in point, the Fiscal Times reports Apple’s Big Manufacturing Boom to the U.S. — 200 Jobs. At the end of last week, CEO Timothy Cook announced that Apple intends to invest $100 million next year to relaunch part of its manufacturing operations in the US.

Guest blog by Matt Erskine, Acting Assistant Secretary for Economic DevelopmentTo mark the one-year anniversary of the White House Startup America Initiative, in January President Obama sent Congress a proposal to expand tax relief and unlock capital for startups and small businesses that are creating jobs.When he launched the initiative a year ago, the president sought to promote the success of entrepreneurs across the country. The private sector responded with the Startup America Partnership, launching new entrepreneurial networks all across the country. AOL co-founder and member of the President’s Jobs Council, Steve Case, and the Kauffman Foundation joined to form the Startup America Partnership, which is a nonprofit alliance of entrepreneurs, major corporations and service providers that has mobilized more than $1 billion in business resources to serve as many as 100,000 startups over the next three years.This year, the administration unveiled several new agency actions to accelerate the growth of young, job-creating companies, at the same time that new entrepreneur-led regional coalitions are launching throughout the nation.One of those efforts will fuel regional innovation. In the coming months, the Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration (EDA), along with several Federal partners, will launch the third round of the i6 Challenge, a multiagency competition which funds regional collaborations to bring innovative, ground-breaking ideas from the lab to the marketplace, creating new startups and jobs across the country. Commerce is also launching a new initiative to connect entrepreneurs with the resources made available through the Startup America Partnership and its partners.

By Kate Sheppard In a new report out this week, Third Way makes a clear case for why pricing carbon dioxide emissions is good economic policy, pushing back against those who argue it would amount to "economic Armageddon."