Jeff Bingaman United States Senator from New Mexico

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman, chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, today urged Congress to swiftly take up and pass energy legislation aimed at creating "green collar" jobs.

"The economy has lost 7.2 million jobs during this recession -- one out of every 20 jobs in the country.  In percentage terms, that is the biggest job loss since the recession in 1948 and 1949," Bingaman said, in a speech on the Senate floor.

"Congress needs to take steps to ensure this recovery is different from the jobless recoveries in our nation's recent past.  The tax cuts enacted during the Bush administration were meant to stimulate job growth but it is apparent now that they failed to do so.  Those tax cuts were too blunt an instrument to do the job, not focused enough on creating jobs, and the $4 trillion hole they dug in the federal budget has made it harder to recover from this recession," Bingaman added.

One way to create jobs is to enact clean energy policies that encourage the use of renewable energy.  Bingaman is the lead author of the American Clean Energy Leadership Act – legislation that creates a national Renewable Electricity Standard, a policy that would require electricity companies to get 15 percent of their power from renewable resources by 2021.  This would spur job growth because it would require new electricity production from wind, solar and other renewable resources.

The American Clean Energy Leadership Act also sets up a revolving loan fund that would provide the financing needed to create the new power plants that produce renewable energy or factories that make wind turbines and other components.

And the Bingaman legislation, among other things, would provide federal grants to defray the costs of retrofitting homes and businesses to reduce energy consumption.

Combined, adopting the American Clean Energy Leadership Act could create more than 500,000.

"Adopting this forward-thinking energy bill will put us on a path toward creating good jobs in the energy sector, help keep our nation competitive and put Americans back to work," Bingaman said.

In recent weeks, Bingaman has delivered other floor speeches on the economy.  He has urged Congress to quickly pass legislation to extend unemployment insurance by at least 14 weeks.  And he has outlined four other steps Congress can immediately pass to create jobs:

• Job Creation Tax Credit worth 10 to 15 percent of the cost of creating new jobs.  The proposal could create 2.8 million new jobs in 2010 and 2.3 million jobs in 2011.
• Enhance the investment tax credit for manufacturing.  Such a credit would subsidize the cost of building new factory space or purchasing new machinery.  Manufacturing jobs are critical to the long-term health of our economy, and additional policies are needed to create them.
• Additional aid to states, in the form of education funds, health care funds, or other direct grants.  Without additional help, states will have to cut services and raise taxes, making the recession worse and slowing down job creation even more.  Enacting additional aid to states could have immediate benefits by curtailing plans to cut state programs.
• Providing emergency bridge loans to families to help them stay in their homes.  The amount of the loan would be equal to up to two years of mortgage payments and could be repaid over 10 or 15 years.  These bridge loans would complement the Job Creation Tax Credit and Manufacturing Investment Tax Credit by preventing a fall-off in the demand for consumer goods and services.