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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Second Stimulus Debated - First Version Credited with 13,000 Jobs in CT

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Wednesday, January 6, 2010   

HARTFORD, Conn. - As Congressional Democrats debate the need for a second federal economic stimulus package, one side is calling for a New Deal-style direct government jobs program, while others are promoting tax breaks as the answer to spur job creation. Both options could emerge in the proposal.

Carol Stambaugh, a regional director of the National Association of Social Workers, supports a second stimulus program, saying it would put people to work. Doing so, even temporarily, she says, would have huge symbolic value beyond a paycheck.

"People right now need the tangible things they can see - either in their hand, in their pocket or in their community. Such a program would provide that."

Some economists contend New Deal jobs did little to shorten the Great Depression, and they are equally critical of jobs created through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), the first economic rescue package, in light of the nation's slow recovery. Stambaugh argues the federal work programs were essential because they gave people hope and that public attitudes and perceptions go a long way in driving what happens in the economy.

The New Deal programs left behind numerous improvements to the nation's infrastructure, she adds, and today, a similar program could help boost green economy projects.

"This is a way to be able to invest in some of those new ideas. For example, improvement in our mass transit systems."

The ARRA is credited with creating and/or saving more than 13,000 jobs in Connecticut.

ARRA jobs information is available at www.cbpp.org/files/10-28-09stim.pdf.






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