1. Free Flow of Data.

The ability of companies and consumers to move data where they see fit is essential to American and global economic prosperity.  The United States has consistently called for policies to enable digital trade, promote innovation and entrepreneurship, and empower and protect consumers.  The G-20 embraced this worldview in Hangzhou, expressing its commitment to the free flow of information, ideas, and knowledge across borders—a commitment that underpins the digital economy’s ability to deliver inclusive growth and development. 

2. Multistakeholder Internet Governance.

The Internet is decentralized, cooperative, and layered and needs a similar governance structure to enable the freedom of innovation and freedom of expression that have become its hallmark.  The United States has been a champion of this multistakeholder approach to internet governance, working to fulfill our commitment to reform the internet domain name system so it is privately, efficiently, and fairly managed.  In Hangzhou, the G-20 committed to preserving the global nature of the Internet, and joined the United States in supporting the multistakeholder approach to Internet governance.  

3. Net Neutrality.

One of the most important reasons the Internet has been such an incredible engine for growth and innovation is that most Internet providers have treated Internet traffic equally.  The United States has led an emerging global consensus around this approach, known as “net neutrality,” with the Federal Communications Commission putting in place strong net neutrality rules in 2015.  The G-20 endorsed the principles underlying this consensus, highlighting the need for its members to examine introducing net neutrality policies to prevent anti-competitive blocking, throttling, or prioritization of data by commercial broadband networks.

4. Broadband Opportunity.

Connectivity is a path to greater opportunity. In today’s world, broadband and fluency with technology fuel economic growth, provide access to the world’s knowledge, promote skills development, and build stronger and more connected communities. The G-20 embraced this vision, calling for policies to promote expanded and better broadband access so all citizens can reap its benefits.  The United States has been working at home and abroad to make this vision a reality and bring more people online.  Domestically, the United States is pursuing such policies under the Administration's ConnectED and ConnectAll initiatives. ConnectED is on track to bring high-speed Internet access to 99 percent of America's schools by 2018, and has in just three years closed the connectivity divide in U.S. schools by half. ConnectALL will ensure that 20 million more Americans have access to broadband by 2020 through a new national broadband subsidy starting this year, while the Department of Commerce’s BroadbandUSA program is assisting communities that want to expand broadband access and adoption. Likewise, the G-20 reaffirmed its goal of ensuring the next 1.5 billion people are connected and have meaningful access to the Internet by 2020.  The United States is doing its part to advance this goal through the Global Connect Initiative, working to bring more people around the world online.

5. Intellectual Property.

The United States has tirelessly advocated for high-quality intellectual property systems, recognizing that protecting intellectual property provides important incentives for inventors and creators, helping to drive innovation and growth in the U.S. and world economy.  In Hangzhou, the G-20 agreed, calling for adequate and effective protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights to promote the development of the digital economy.  The G20 also reaffirmed its 2015 commitment that G-20 members should not conduct or support cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property. 

6. Strengthening Cybersecurity.

In Hangzhou, the United States continued to show leadership in promoting international cooperation on cybersecurity, as called for in the President’s 2011 International Strategy for Cyberspace.  Promoting cybersecurity in today’s online environment requires a collaborative approach among government and the private sector to encourage innovation and recognize differing needs among actors, not “one-size fits all” technological solutions that risk lock-in and path determinism.  The President’s Executive Order on Promoting Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity and the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Framework for Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity endorse a risk-based approach that gives organizations the flexibility to decide how best to secure their systems, using a wide range of standards, innovative products and services available in the marketplace.  The G-20 endorsed this approach in Hangzhou, committing to address security risks, threats, and vulnerabilities in the digital economy, including through application of risk-based cybersecurity standards, guidelines, and best practices.

7.  Transparency and Good Governance.

Open data can serve as fuel for innovation and scientific discovery, and promote more efficient, transparent, and collaborative democracy.  The Administration has implemented policies aimed at helping all Americans reap the benefits of public open data, including the President’s memo on Transparency and Open Government, the Office of Management and Budget’s Open Government Directive, and the President’s Executive Order on Open and Machine Readable Government Information.  The G-20 endorsed similar policies in Hangzhou, calling on members to encourage publication of relevant, publicly available government data, which has the potential to boost new technology, products and services.  Likewise, the G20 members committed to engage in open, transparent, inclusive, evidence-based policy making, to support industry-led standards, and to reduce, eliminate, or prevent unnecessary differences in regulations.

The United States is already implementing these measures at home to enable innovation and entrepreneurship.  We are glad to see a global consensus developing around these policies, with the G-20 establishing them as international best practices, helping ensure that the digital economy can serve as one of the most important drivers of global economic growth and development not just for the United States, but for the entire world.

“[the American response] should be part of a globally coordinated effort with our partners in the G-20. This is a worldwide issue, and while the United States can and will lead in stabilizing the credit markets, we should ask other nations, who share in this crisis, to be part of the solution as well.”

Then-Senator Barack Obama, 2008

Within months of taking office, in April 2009, the President joined the second-ever summit meeting of the G-20 Leaders. Members committed to an aggressive policy response aimed at restoring growth and jobs, strengthening global financial oversight, and resisting protectionism. They mobilized trillions of dollars in fiscal stimulus and billions to the IMF and other Multilateral Development Banks. They created a Financial Stability Board and pledged to reshape national institutions, thereby supporting international authorities in their efforts to oversee domestic financial markets. They agreed to refrain from competitive devaluation of currencies and to take actions against tax havens. And now, as the President embarks for the final G-20 meeting of his presidency, both the U.S. and global economies are substantially stronger than they were almost 8 years ago—although more work remains to be done.

At the time of President Obama’s first G-20 Leaders’ Summit in April 2009, U.S. businesses were cutting hundreds of thousands of jobs a month, the U.S. economy had been in recession for over a year, and the unemployment rate had risen to 9 percent on its way to a peak of 10 percent. The global economy was shrinking for the first time in half a century as the world dealt with a financial crisis and its aftershocks. By some measures, the global economy was on a worse trajectory than was observed in 1929 at the outset of the Great Depression. Industrial production was contracting sharply, global trade slowing even faster than at the start of the Depression, and millions of workers were suddenly without jobs. 

Today, U.S. output is more than 10 percent above its pre-crisis peak, and the global economy is in its seventh consecutive year of expansion. While the G-20 economies contracted during 2008, they are on more solid footing today and have grown during every four-quarter period since the third quarter of 2009, despite a range of unexpected challenges that arose over the intervening years. Since the crisis, the G-20 has confronted slowdowns in Emerging Markets, large up and then downswings in commodity markets, continued banking stress in many member nations, and financial crisis in parts of Europe. Still, despite these coming on the heels of the worst global economic shock in generations, economies around the world have returned to growth and have strengthened their foundations for long-term stability and prosperity.

Since employment growth began in early 2010, U.S. businesses have added 15 million jobs, and the unemployment rate has fallen to half its peak and below its pre-crisis average. The unemployment rate repeatedly fell faster than independent economists expected, as the United States posted the longest streak of positive job growth in history. Unemployment in other countries has fallen meaningfully as well, though much more must still be done to strengthen labor markets in countries around the world.

At the upcoming G-20 Leaders’ Summit in Hangzhou, President Obama will emphasize the need to continue building on the progress made since 2009 in advancing strong, sustainable, balanced, and inclusive global economic growth.  While today there is no one-size-fits-all prescription for the G-20, it is clear that all countries must craft domestic policy approaches that follow through on the G-20 commitment to use all policy tools – including fiscal policy – to strengthen the global economic recovery.  For some members, there is considerable scope for greater investment in infrastructure, while many countries have opportunities to take steps to lift wages or support household incomes. The global economy is growing and, through hard work and resilience, has moved beyond the financial crisis, but greater ambitions of further strengthening growth and ensuring that its benefits are broadly shared are still needed.

Since 2009, the G-20 has also established itself as an invaluable forum, allowing leaders of the world’s major economies to work together to lift growth in mutually-supportive ways and reform the global financial system to help prevent future crises. Beyond the immediate economic crisis in the spring of 2009 and the recovery over the following years, the G-20 has taken steps to build a framework for strong, sustainable, balanced and inclusive growth in the long term. This has included policy coordination and consultation, as well as commitments to allow market determination of exchange rates, phase out fossil fuel subsidies, and implement strategies to create jobs and boost investment.  These efforts are strengthening the global economy today and will continue to do so in the future. 

The G-20 has also played a crucial role in areas where international cooperation is the only way to make solid progress.  For example, the G-20 worked to strengthen the international financial regulatory system, including better coordination across countries. This major accomplishment has made the global economy better able to weather financial shocks and to prevent them from causing broader economic damage on Main Street and across borders. The G-20 has worked to combat the use of tax havens and profit shifting, which has required a joint effort across the major economies. The G-20 has also improved financial transparency and made significant progress to address corruption around the world.

Finally, the G-20 has advanced the goal of more representative and inclusive global economic governance.  At the Pittsburgh Summit in 2009, President Obama and his counterparts made the decision to elevate the G-20 as the premier forum for international economic cooperation, ensuring that major emerging economies would have a seat at the table for the world’s key economic policy decisions. The G-20 has in turn worked to modernize and strengthen the international financial architecture, including a historic recapitalization and reform across multilateral development banks, reforming the quota and governance system of the IMF, and ensuring that the heads of international financial institutions will be appointed through open, merit-based processes.  Taken together, these steps reinforce U.S. leadership in the rules-based global economic system that has prevailed since the end of World War II.

In 2009, the global economy faced a historic crisis and a turning point. The decisions of economic policymakers during this time would reverberate for years, and the course they charted had to navigate many pitfalls. Confronted with a once-in-a-generation challenge, the G-20 provided a forum for productive and open dialogue, enabling important progress on growth and issues of global economic governance that have left the world economy in a fundamentally better place than leaders found it when they surveyed the globe in April 2009. We still face many challenges to provide the sustainable, inclusive growth that our citizens depend on, but the G-20 puts us in a better position to meet those challenges together.

That capacity -- and the uniquely American spirit of innovation that fuels it -- has also inspired admiration from across the globe for generations. And since his first day in office, President Obama has worked to strengthen our innovation advantage -- through investments and reforms to drive technological and scientific breakthroughs that will power our economy and strengthen America’s leadership in the industries of the future.

Throughout this week, we’ll be taking stock of America’s innovative progress over the last seven-and-a-half years and announcing new steps we’re taking to build on those efforts -- including supporting advanced manufacturing and making, laying the groundwork for smart and connected cities, and expanding inclusive entrepreneurship across the United States.

That's what President Obama will be discussing today at the third annual SelectUSA Summit. He'll be joining 2,400 global business leaders representing more than 70 markets to discuss the role that innovation and smart trade policies like the Trans-Pacific Partnership play in attracting investment to the United States and supporting good American jobs.

During those remarks, he will announce that today the Smart Manufacturing Leadership Coalition in Los Angeles won the ninth manufacturing hub competition, receiving an award of $70 million in Federal investment for smart manufacturing that enables seamless, real-time operation and control on the shop floor. The winning team has matched this with at least another $70 million across their nearly 200 partners. Smart manufacturing uses advanced sensors and process controls to reduce waste, save energy, and make our manufacturing industry more efficient.

Today’s announcement also puts the Administration on pace to launch 15 new, innovative manufacturing hubs funded with public and private investments, as the President called for in 2012 -- from 3-D printing in Youngstown, Ohio; to photonics in Rochester, New York; to flexible hybrid electronics in San Jose, California. It also sets the stage for manufacturing to grow into new domains, including cell and tissue repair that may one day help us eliminate the organ transplant waiting list.

The President will bookend this week with a sit-down with Facebook’s Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and three global entrepreneurs on the last day of the seventh annual Global Entrepreneurship Summit on Friday -- an event that will showcase the importance of empowering global entrepreneurs to make communities around the world more economically prosperous and secure.

And between those events, we will announce new actions that will help clear the path for the kinds of next generation technologies that can drive game-changing economic growth, along with new efforts to support American entrepreneurs and expand the benefits of entrepreneurship to all parts of our country.

Be sure to tune in to the President’s remarks today and the Global Entrepreneurship Summit conversation on Friday -- and join our ongoing conversation throughout the week about how we can continue to harness technology for the public good and foster the next great era of American innovation.

H.R. 5278, the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA), has already been passed through the House Natural Resources Committee on an overwhelmingly bipartisan basis. Doing nothing would consign Puerto Rico to a chaotic, disorderly downward spiral that risks a worsening humanitarian crisis.

Here are the corrections to harmful misconceptions about PROMESA and the important tools it provides to address the crisis hurting 3.5 million Americans in Puerto Rico. 

MYTH: Puerto Rico can get a better deal through Congress after July 1st or next year.

Puerto Rico is out of time and out of cash. It has already begun defaulting on debt payments, stretching its luck with suppliers, and cutting back on essential services. On July 1, Puerto Rico will face nearly $2 billion worth of payments that it does not have the money to pay. Creditors may sue to force Puerto Rico to pay its debts instead of providing essential services. The only thing that is certain is that without action by Congress, the crisis will get much worse. For those that are fighting for the 3.5 million Americans in Puerto Rico, it would be irresponsible to allow the situation to get even worse when there is no real alternative to the current bill. The reality is that legislation for Puerto Rico requires bipartisan compromise. And as with any compromise, there are parts of this legislation that we do not support, that we would like to be better. But for the moment, we have a deal that:

• Immediately halts costly and disruptive litigation
• Keeps all of Puerto Rico’s debts on the table
• Prohibits carve-outs or special favors to creditors
• Respects Puerto Rico’s self-governance while providing needed transparency and oversight
• Protects pensions and essential services 

We will continue to do all we can to improve the deal that is on the table, but we should recognize that this is a deal Democrats and Republicans should be able to get behind.

MYTH: PROMESA favors hedge funds over the well-being of the 3.5 million Americans in Puerto Rico.

PROMESA requires shared sacrifice from Puerto Rico’s creditors to achieve a sustainable solution for Puerto Rico. PROMESA puts all of Puerto Rico’s liabilities on the table, with no special carve-outs or bail-outs for Puerto Rico’s creditors. And unlike Puerto Rico’s current laws, PROMESA has no special carve-outs or bailouts for creditors. It is simply not true that PROMESA favors hedge funds. To the contrary, hedge funds and other powerful financial interests have spent millions of dollars on attack ads and hired well-known lobbyists to work to defeat the legislation. On July 1, Puerto Rico will face nearly $2 billion worth of payments that it does not have the money to pay. In the absence of this bill, Puerto Rico’s future will be in the hands of its creditors—not its people. 

MYTH: Puerto Rico won’t have a voice on the oversight board.

PROMESA creates an independent oversight board to help implement needed reforms while respecting Puerto Rico’s self-governance. Congressional leaders from both parties have committed to work with President Obama to set politics aside and nominate a well-functioning, independent group of experts to serve on the board. The Governor of Puerto Rico has a role on the board, and the Administration is committed to ensuring that Puerto Ricans will be well-represented in board membership. 

This independent oversight board is designed so Puerto Rico’s elected leaders remain responsible for initiating and driving economic policy. PROMESA is clear that the Governor of Puerto Rico remains in charge of developing Puerto Rico’s five year fiscal plan and annual budgets, and the Legislature must pass the budget and the laws required to implement the budget. Only if—after multiple opportunities for revision—the Governor’s plan fails to reduce Puerto Rico’s debt to a sustainable level or fails to protect pensions and essential services is the oversight board allowed to counter the Governor’s plan with an alternate plan. In addition, strong provisions and disclosure requirements written into the legislation will prevent anyone with a conflict of interest from serving on the oversight board. Once Puerto Rico is on the path to economic recovery, the board will—by law—terminate permanently. 

MYTH: PROMESA will mean further austerity and cuts to essential services.

Puerto Rico is already in a financial crisis. Puerto Rico cannot afford the $70 billion debt that it amassed during a decade-long recession—let alone basic government services. On July 1, Puerto Rico will face nearly $2 billion worth of payments that it does not have the money to pay. Without provisions outlined in PROMESA, creditors may sue to force Puerto Rico to pay its debts instead of providing essential services. Courts could order the Governor to pay creditors instead of paying for police, firefighters, and hospitals. 

PROMESA removes the damaging uncertainty of complex and protracted litigation and provides Puerto Rico with the breathing space it needs to focus on providing essential services and restructuring its debts. In addition, PROMESA will allow Puerto Rico to restructure all of its financial liabilities. Puerto Rico spends over a third of its budget today on debt payments—crowding out needed investments and forcing cuts to essential services. By giving Puerto Rico the tools it needs to reorganize its unsustainable debt payment obligations, PROMESA will free up funds that can ultimately be invested in the local economy to attract private investment, create jobs, and better support workers and retirees. 

MYTH: PROMESA fails to protect pensions. Puerto Rico’s pensions could get a better deal under Puerto Rico’s current laws than under PROMESA.

Public workers in Puerto Rico have little protection for their pensions in the absence of PROMESA. Puerto Rico’s constitution prioritizes payments to bondholders. Unlike bondholders, Puerto Rico’s pensions have no explicit protection or payment priority under Puerto Rico’s constitution.  Additionally, pensioners—unlike many bondholders—do not have a claim on specific tax revenues for repayment. If pitted in a race to the courthouse against Puerto Rico’s creditors, the retirement security of Puerto Rico’s pensioners would be in serious jeopardy. With PROMESA, Puerto Rico will be required to provide adequate funding to support the pensions of hundreds of thousands of individuals. Puerto Rico will be expressly prohibited from balancing its budget by short-changing pensions.

Without legislation, the underfunding of the pension system will likely get worse. At the same time, PROMESA does not preclude litigation regarding the legitimacy of Puerto Rico’s debt. In contrast to PROMESA, which protects pensions, a disorderly default puts pensions at serious risk. Without this legislation, Puerto Rico’s workers do not have the protection they deserve. 

MYTH: The oversight board can order the Governor to lay-off workers or cut wages.

The oversight board has NO authority to lay-off workers or cut wages. PROMESA is clear that the Governor of Puerto Rico remains in charge of developing Puerto Rico’s five year fiscal plan and annual budgets, and the Legislature must pass the budget and the laws required to implement the budget. Only if—after multiple opportunities for revision—the Governor’s budget exceeds the level set by the fiscal plan is the oversight board allowed to call for expenditure reductions or hiring freezes to bring budgets back into balance. But how those expenditure reductions or hiring freezes are implemented, rests entirely with the Governor and Puerto Rico’s legislature. 

PROMESA provides the oversight board NO authority to dictate how budget cuts, if necessary, should be carried out nor to require that wages or jobs be cut. PROMESA does require that Puerto Rico reduce its debt service—which currently takes up more than 30 percent of its budget—to a sustainable level freeing up revenues to sustain government operations and protect essential services. 

MYTH: Passing PROMESA would mean bailing out Puerto Rico or its creditors.

PROMESA is the opposite of a bailout. PROMESA provides Puerto Rico with the ability to comprehensively restructure its financial liabilities and provides appropriate fiscal oversight and transparency to ensure needed fiscal reforms are implemented. 

Restructuring Puerto Rico’s unsustainable debt does not cost the federal taxpayer even a single additional dollar. Rather than a bailout, PROMESA requires shared sacrifice on the part of Puerto Rico and its creditors; for all stakeholders to do their part to come to a resolution. The alternative—an untested and potentially disruptive process with numerous creditor lawsuits and years of litigation—would increase costs, depress the local economy, delay creditor recoveries and make long-term economic recovery harder to achieve. 

PROMESA provides Puerto Rico with the tools it urgently needs to responsibly resolve this crisis. Without PROMESA, the risk that Congress might need to use tax-payer to avert a humanitarian disaster in Puerto Rico only increases in the face of a spiraling, uncontrolled and disorderly crisis. 

Watch @CEAChair break down how competition can get you a better deal on your cable box → https://t.co/adWSeO0qrI https://t.co/FQ4WENEM2y

Building on efforts over the last seven years, the President is launching a new initiative to stoke competition across our economy, so that no corporation can unfairly squeeze their competitors, their workers, or their customers at everyone’s expense. Stronger competition matters because it can deliver lower prices, higher quality, and better customer service for consumers. It gives workers more of a voice and can help strengthen wage growth.  And it’s what entrepreneurs need to get a fair shot at growing their businesses and creating jobs.

Before There Were Cable Boxes

Before getting into the details, a little historical context (and more on a specific action we’re taking today).

Millenials are often defined as the generation born after 1980. But they could also be described as the generation that doesn’t remember what it’s like to be forced to rent a big, overpriced, basic phone from the phone company.

Until the early 1980s, the phone company had a monopoly—not just on the wire to your house but, in many cases, on the phone you plugged into that wire.

And the result wasn’t pretty.

Phones had little variety, evoking the famous Henry Ford quote — "You can have any color, so long as it’s black” — and only the most basic functionality. Worse yet, households had to pay a fee each month to rent these phones that added up over time to many multiples of what they would have paid to purchase a similar (or fancier) phone themselves.

Then, all that changed when the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and others took action to open up phones to competition. This competition and the technological progress it helped drive, led to a proliferation of digital dialing, built-in answering machines, a panoply of styles, cordless phones, and other innovations.

A similar dynamic has taken hold elsewhere in American homes today: According to a recent study, 99 percent of all cable subscribers lease a set-top box to get their cable and satellite programming.

It sits in the middle of our living rooms, and most of us don’t think twice about it. But that same study found that the average household pays $231 per year to rent these often clunky boxes. And, while the cost of making these boxes is going down, their price to consumers has been rising.

Like the telephones in 1980s, that’s a symptom of a market that is cordoned off from competition. And that’s got to change.

How We're Taking Action To Fix It

That’s why today the President announced that his Administration is calling on the FCC to open up set-top cable boxes to competition. This will allow for companies to create new, innovative, higher-quality, lower-cost products. Instead of spending nearly $1,000 over four years to lease a set of behind-the-times boxes, American families will have options to own a device for much less money that will integrate everything they want — including their cable or satellite content, as well as online streaming apps — in one, easier-to-use gadget.

But we’re not stopping there. In many ways, the set-top box is the mascot for a new initiative we’re launching today. That box is a stand-in for what happens when you don’t have the choice to go elsewhere—for all the parts of our economy where competition could do more.

Across our economy, too many consumers are dealing with inferior or overpriced products, too many workers aren’t getting the wage increases they deserve, too many entrepreneurs and small businesses are getting squeezed out unfairly by their bigger competitors, and overall we are not seeing the level of innovative growth we would like to see. And a big piece of why that happens is anti-competitive behavior—companies stacking the deck against their competitors and their workers. We’ve got to fix that, by doing everything we can to make sure that consumers, middle-class and working families, and entrepreneurs are getting a fair deal.

That’s why today, the President announced a broader new initiative through an Executive Order that calls on departments and agencies to make further progress through specific, pro-competition executive actions that empower and inform consumers, workers, and entrepreneurs. In 60 days, agencies will report back on specific areas where we can make additional progress.

Alongside that announcement, the White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) released a new issue brief that describes the many benefits of competition, highlights recent work by the independent antitrust authorities, and argues that consumers, workers, entrepreneurs, and small businesses would benefit from additional policy actions to promote competition within a variety of industries. These new steps will build on pro-competition progress we’ve made—from cell phone unlocking to net neutrality, from cracking down on conflicts of interest in retirement advice to efforts to free up essential technologies so that big incumbent companies can’t crowd out their competitors.

In the coming months, we’ll be doing everything we can across government to build on that progress and deliver on the pro-competition initiative we’re announcing today.

We heard from the group about what they are seeing in their communities, including specific heart-wrenching stories of members of their congregations whose lives have been devastated by usurious loans. We heard their recommendations for action to address the abuses in payday lending that are visiting hardship upon their communities.

What emerged was a common, powerful theme: that we have a moral obligation as a country to do something to stop payday lenders from preying on consumers by trapping them in an endless cycle of debt.

These leaders reflected the views of their communities. For example, a recent survey reported that 77 percent of American Christians and 85 percent of Evangelical Christians think predatory lending is sinful. Ninety-four percent of Christians believe that lenders should only extend loans at reasonable interest rates based on an ability to repay. In an example of a faith community in action, leaders in Garland, Texas drove predatory lending from their community after many were ensnared in payday debt traps. And coalitions of religious organizations such as Faith for Just Lending are making their voices heard across the country.

Providing stronger protections in areas such as payday lending are precisely why the President worked with Congress to create a new, independent agency focused solely on consumer protection as part of financial reform, and to ensure it had the authority to address abuses in this space. Last March, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) took steps toward a rulemaking to curb abusive practices involving payday loans and other short-term lending.

Yet even as there is widespread agreement across a diverse array of faith communities that something needs to be done to address payday lending abuses, too often these reasonable efforts face stiff resistance from the special interests supported by the payday loan industry. So, today was an important reaffirmation that diverse religious leaders and thousands like them are making clear why the independent CFPB has such strong moral grounds for addressing abuses in payday lending. We are grateful to these religious leaders for their commitment to serve their communities and look forward to working with them in the days ahead.

Here's what we're doing to make sure big corporations are paying their fair share of taxes. https://t.co/1yeF6gVwqT

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) April 5, 2016

The following explains what corporate inversions are and why this issue is so important for regular American taxpayers.

What are corporate inversions?

Corporate inversions are a tax loophole that allow U.S. companies to avoid paying U.S. taxes by relocating – on paper – to a foreign country.

In a typical inversion, a U.S. company acquires a smaller company based in a foreign country – usually a low-tax country – and then locates the residence of the combined company in that other country for tax purposes.

Companies typically invert on paper for tax purposes without moving their actual operations overseas.  That means that they continue to enjoy the benefits of being a U.S. company, including access to U.S. markets, rule of law, patent and intellectual property enforcement, support for research and development, and – not least -- American workers.

How do corporate inversions cost regular taxpayers?

According to Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation, corporate inversions will cost the U.S. Treasury as much as $40 billion over the next ten years.* As President Obama has said: 

"When companies exploit loopholes like this, it makes it harder to invest in the things that will keep America strong for future generations. . . . Many of those loopholes come at the expense of middle class families – because that lost revenue could have been used to invest in our schools, make college more affordable, put people back to work building our roads, and create more opportunities for our children.”

Check out this infographic for a clear picture of corporate inversions and what they're costing you. 

What has President Obama proposed to do about corporate inversions?

President Obama has been calling on Congress to stop corporate inversions since 2014. In the last three Budgets he has submitted to Congress, the President proposed to fully close the loophole that allows for corporate inversions. The President has also put forward a Framework for Business Tax Reform (first released in 2012 and updated this month) that proposed more fundamental reforms to make our business tax system more efficient and pro-growth. Unfortunately, Congress has not yet acted to address corporate inversions or to enact business tax reform.

But the President has also been clear that where Congress fails to act, his Administration will do everything within its authority to ensure that the system works for hard-working Americans and our economy. That is why he applauded the actions the Treasury Department has taken to make it more difficult for companies to invert and to limit the economic benefits of doing so.

What does the new Treasury Department’s action do?

On Monday (April 4), the Treasury Department took action within its authority under existing tax laws to limit corporate inversions. Treasury’s action builds on two prior actions it has taken to make it more difficult to invert and reduce the economic benefits of doing so.

The new Treasury action limits corporate inversions in two ways:

1. Addressing “serial inverters”: In a “serial inversion,” a U.S. company undertakes an inversion by acquiring a foreign company that itself has inverted or grown larger through acquisitions of U.S. firms. Serial inverters may be able to avoid penalties under existing law that kick in if the foreign firm in an inversion transaction is below a certain size in relation to the U.S. firm that is acquiring it.

To give an example, first, a U.S. company inverts overseas: it moves its residence to another country for tax purposes by acquiring a smaller foreign firm and locating the residence of the combined firm in the foreign country. Next, another U.S. company undertakes an inversion by acquiring the new foreign company that was created in the first transaction. In this way, one tax inversion can beget another tax inversion: One American company can follow another American company out the door.

Treasury’s action restricts serial inversions by not counting inversions or foreign acquisitions of U.S. firms occurring within the last three years when applying the formula that determines whether an inversion is subjected to penalties or blocked by existing tax code rules. That means that companies cannot use a recent inversion or a recent foreign acquisition to enable an inversion and avoid triggering penalties.

2. Addressing “earnings stripping”: Earnings stripping is a tactic that large foreign-based companies use to avoid paying U.S. taxes by artificially shifting their profits out of the United States. They are able to shift profits by having their U.S. affiliate pay interest on a loan from an affiliate in another country, typically a low-tax country. This is a win-win for the corporation: the U.S. affiliate lowers its taxes in the United States by deducting the cost of their interest payments, and then the foreign affiliate owes little or no tax on those interest payments. 

The ability to strip earnings out of the United States using such related-party loans is a major incentive for U.S. firms to acquire a foreign tax residence by inverting. Earnings stripping also erodes the U.S. corporate tax base and puts other firms at a competitive disadvantage.

Treasury’s new action addresses earnings stripping by recharacterizing certain related-party interest payments as dividends that cannot be deducted – in other words, preventing debt that doesn’t actually finance new investment in the United States from receiving a tax break.  

What will happen going forward?

Treasury has said that it will continue reviewing its authority under existing law to limit, and where possible stop, corporate inversions.

As the President has made clear, while Treasury’s new action will make it more difficult and less lucrative for companies to exploit the inversions loophole, only legislation – like that proposed in his Budget – can close it for good. That is why he has called on Congress to act immediately to stop corporate inversions.

Seth Hanlon is Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy at the White House National Economic Council. 

*Revenue estimate for H.R. 415, Stop Corporate Inversions Act of 2014 (Rep. Sander Levin)

But today, we’re taking one step forward to change that. In honor of National Donate Life Month, the President issued a Proclamation that solidifies his Administration’s commitment to shortening the organ waiting list, emphasizing that “across government, industry, academia, private organizations, and the medical and philanthropic communities, we must all do our part to lift up donors, donor families, and patients by supporting efforts to shorten the organ waiting list.”

Today’s Proclamation builds on the action this Administration has taken to improve outcomes for individuals waiting for organ transplants and support living donors.

Each year, approximately 6,000 Americans make the selfless decision to become a living organ donor, facilitating life-saving kidney and liver transplants. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, individuals who have donated organs have access to health insurance without worrying whether their donation will be considered a pre-existing condition.

The HOPE Act signed by President Obama in 2013 laid the groundwork for the first HIV-positive to HIV-positive transplants in the United States. This week, surgeons at Johns Hopkins announced that they had performed the first-in-the-world HIV-positive to HIV-positive liver transplant and the first-in-the-U.S. HIV-positive to HIV-positive kidney transplant. These medical successes will pave the way for as many as 1,000 people a year in the United States to have access to life-saving transplants that would not have been possible before.

But there is still more we can do. The vast majority of the organ waiting list is made up of people waiting for a kidney transplant. These Americans are hoping for a life-saving transplant that can add more years to their lives. In addition to the tremendous human cost, the kidney waiting list carries a huge cost to the public purse; Medicare pays more than $34 billion per year – more than the entire budget of the National Institutes of Health – to care for patients with end-stage kidney failure.

A recent transformative innovation called kidney paired donation (KPD), which pools living donors and recipients to increase the likelihood of matches, can improve this. In order to increase the number of potential transplants, the Department of Health and Human Services launched a nationwide KPD program in 2010 to build on this practice.

Drawing on the spirit of innovation that President Obama spoke about in this year’s State of the Union, seven government agencies have now invested nearly $3 billion over a 3-year period in the future of bioengineering to advance our understanding of wound repair and organ and tissue regeneration and preservation.

Part of the answer will be continuing to invest in scientific breakthroughs that redefine what is possible in bioengineering. Just a few generations ago, living without kidneys was unimaginable. But that changed thanks to Dr. Willem Kolff, a Dutch immigrant who brought his invention of the dialysis machine to the United States after World War II. As we seek to create the future we want to live in, we must harness this spirit of hard work and creativity to help shorten the organ waiting list.

Towards that end, in the coming months, senior Administration officials will host a Summit at the White House to highlight the role of innovation in organ donation and transplantation, discuss the challenges we face, and lift up commitments to meet them. As the President said in his Proclamation, “we recommit to supporting the researchers, innovators, advocates, and medical professionals working to reduce the number of people awaiting vital organ transplants.”

But there is still a simple and profound part that Americans across the country can play in this challenge to reduce the organ waiting list. More than ninety percent of Americans support organ donation, but only a fraction are registered to donate themselves. Helping ensure that more people are aware of donation opportunities is a crucial first step. To register as an organ donor or learn more, visit www.organdonor.gov.

Dr. Mary Wakefield is HHS Acting Deputy Secretary.

Seizing an opportunity to revitalize American manufacturing

When President Obama took office, many had been arguing for years that U.S. manufacturing was facing an inexorable decline, that production in the U.S. was no longer competitive globally, and that the closure of factories all around the country was a part of the natural transition to an information economy. President Obama never accepted those arguments, having long understood that a country’s ability to make things is inextricably linked to a country’s ability to innovate. The President’s commitment began with rescuing the auto industry from the brink of collapse and saving more than 1 million American jobs, but it did not end there.

As the country emerged from recession and the auto industry began to get back on its feet, the President recognized that if we were going to seize the opportunity to revitalize our manufacturing sector, the entire country would need to come together and invest in public-private partnerships that leverage our uniquely American strengths. That’s why in 2012 he launched the National Network for Manufacturing Innovation, to help reinvent and reinvigorate U.S. manufacturing and keep us on the cutting-edge of competitiveness for the next generation of manufacturing jobs and investment.

Introducing the Revolutionary Fibers and Textiles Manufacturing Institute

Federal investments of over $600 million in the institutes have had a catalytic impact, attracting more than $1.2 billion in private sector resources for collaborative, precompetitive research and development to transition groundbreaking manufacturing technologies out of the lab and into production.

Today, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced the latest manufacturing hub, headquartered in Cambridge, MA. The Revolutionary Fibers and Textiles Manufacturing Institute will be focused on U.S. leadership in manufacturing innovative fabrics and textiles with novel properties--ranging from being incredibly lightweight and flame resistant, to having exceptional strength and containing electronic sensors. With wide-ranging applications, these technical textiles can forge protective gear for firefighters impervious to the hottest flames, replicate the sensing capabilities of a smart watch into a lightweight fabric, or detect when a wounded soldier needs to be treated with an antimicrobial compression bandage.

With today’s announcement, the Administration has now awarded eight manufacturing innovation institutes, having partnered with a total of over 800 manufacturers, universities, and non-profits to strengthen U.S. competitiveness for manufacturing jobs and investment. Federal investments of over $600 million in the institutes have had a catalytic impact, attracting more than $1.2 billion in private sector resources for collaborative, precompetitive research and development to transition groundbreaking manufacturing technologies out of the lab and into production. And while still in its early stages, the network of manufacturing hubs is having a real impact around the country. 

From Texas to New York, manufacturing is making a comeback

Lloyd Whetzel, CEO of X-FAB’s semiconductor foundry in Lubbock, Texas, knows firsthand that for the U.S. to stay competitive for manufacturing jobs and investment we have to innovate ahead of the curve. Through X-FAB’s partnership with Power America, the power electronics manufacturing innovation institute headquartered in North Carolina, the Texas facility was able to accelerate the development of new semiconductor technology it needed in order to pursue new lines of business that could keep the facility open and protect more than 400 jobs. As Lloyd says:

“X-FAB Texas is a commercial entity and the PowerAmerica Institute is the first federally-funded program in which we have participated. This program has been an outstanding success. It allows this facility to pivot to a new, emerging market and not only retain the jobs we have in place, but provide the foundation for employment expansion as business grows.”

The manufacturing institutes are helping accelerate a similar tale of reinvention and revival in Rochester, NY. Last month, AIM Photonics, the Rochester-based photonics manufacturing innovation institute, helped attract new production to the area. Leveraging the capabilities of the manufacturing institute, two companies announced they are bringing over $1.4 billion of new investment and over 800 manufacturing jobs to the Rochester region opening up new factories on the same grounds where Kodak once operated, showing once again that these institutes can help nurture a broader economic revival. 

Textiles manufacturing, once the poster child for job-loss and offshoring, is now making a comeback.

Today’s announcement is adding new innovation and new hope to an industry that some thought would not be able to persist in America. Textiles manufacturing, once the poster child for job-loss and offshoring, is now making a comeback. Fueled by revolutionary new technologies, the American textile industry is adding jobs for the first time in decades, has increased shipments by 14 percent since 2009, and has grown exports by 39 percent since 2009. Today’s new manufacturing institute will invest over $300 million of public-private investment to further accelerate this recovery and strengthen U.S. leadership in novel textiles.

Nearly 900,000 new manufacturing jobs and counting

Thanks to the resilience of American businesses and our innovative strengths as a country, U.S. manufacturing is experiencing its longest period of job growth in decades, adding nearly 900,000 new manufacturing jobs and counting. With eight manufacturing innovation institutes and counting, the National Network for Manufacturing Innovation is helping ensure U.S. manufacturing keeps up its winning streak.

In 2009, the President inherited an economy that by many measures was collapsing as fast or faster than at the start of the Great Depression. 800,000 Americans were losing their jobs per month. That’s a staggering number – the equivalent of laying off the entire workforce of West Virginia or the entire Milwaukee area each month. Our financial sector was imploding, foreclosures were skyrocketing, and the auto industry had broken down. We were on the brink of a second Great Depression and global leadership was up for grabs.

That’s where we were then. Here’s where we are now:

Today, American businesses have added 14 million new jobs over 71 straight months of private-sector job growth, extending the longest streak on record. The unemployment rate has been cut by more than half to 4.9 percent. And we’ve gotten to that level four years earlier than economists predicted just a few years ago. Wages for hardworking Americans have risen at the fastest pace since the crisis over the past six months. Home prices have risen for four straight years, restoring trillions of dollars of wealth to middle-class families. Deficits are down three-quarters. And auto sales are at record highs. When the President took office, business leaders ranked China the number one place to invest. Now, we've reclaimed the top spot for three years straight. As the President said in the State of the Union a month ago, we’ve got the strongest and most durable economy in the world. America is leading again.

None of that progress was inevitable. It was fought for and hard-won.

Upon entering the White House, the President was determined to act quickly and aggressively to rescue and rebuild our economy on a foundation for long-term growth and prosperity. That’s what the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a historic growth and job creation package, was all about. And that’s why – against near unanimous opposition from Republicans in Congress – the President fought to get it done in the face of short-sighted, partisan attacks. 

Republicans in Washington spent most of their time trying to turn “stimulus” into a bad word. They trashed the President’s plan to dig us out of recession before dusting off their gold shovels and oversized scissors to take credit at groundbreakings and ribbon cuttings when his work paid off in their communities. At times, it may have been an effective political strategy, but it wasn’t the right thing to do.

Guided by policy over politics and less than one month into his first term, the President signed the Recovery Act into law seven years ago. And he didn’t stop there: Despite fierce opposition from Republicans in Congress, and even with the majority of Americans at the time opposed, the President took action to rescue the American auto industry. In the face of dire economic predictions that taxpayers would lose billions or trillions in our effort to stabilize the financial system using Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds, the President pressed forward. And against entrenched interests, powerful lobbyists and resistant Republicans, he took on Wall Street – implementing commonsense reforms through Dodd-Frank and creating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to hold financial institutions accountable and protect consumers from the types of abuses that preceded the crisis. 

And while the process was messy and the decisions tough, today it’s clear: the President’s decisions worked.

Just six months after the President took office with an economy collapsing at Depression-like rates, our economy returned to growth. Domestic auto production has more than doubled. TARP generated a positive return for taxpayers. And Dodd-Frank continues to help ensure that Wall Street follows the rules of the road while the CFPB is working to protect consumers every day.

But the President’s fiscal response to America’s crisis was about more than quick fixes. He kept an eye to the future, which is why the Recovery Act made the largest single investment in clean energy in history; why it began the work of rebuilding our roads, bridges and airports; why it catalyzed education reform, dramatically expanded broadband Internet, and made big investments in electronic health records – because President Obama knows that our future success is rooted in the investments we make now.

This Friday, the President will travel to Jacksonville, Florida to see first-hand the good jobs of the future that the Recovery Act helped make a reality today. He’ll visit Saft, where Americans go to work every day in a facility funded by the Recovery Act building the lithium-ion batteries that help integrate renewable energy into our grid and power our hybrids. And he’ll talk about the tough choices he faced early in his first term to right America’s course. 

Seven years ago, the President bet on the American people. From making college more affordable to ramping up support for clean energy and offering tax relief to boost incomes for middle-class families, the Recovery Act invested in the ingenuity and hard work of our entrepreneurs and teachers, our scientists and inventors. While some in Washington may have considered it a bad bet back then, it’s clear today that, thanks to the grit and determination of the American people and the critical decisions the President made during the financial crisis, we’ve seized a better future.

That’s why in his State of the Union address, the President called on Congress to enact policies that will help workers in an ever-changing economy save for retirement and take their retirement savings with them as they change jobs. In every Budget since taking office, the President has proposed to automatically enroll approximately 30 million workers without access to a workplace retirement plan in an IRA. And today, we’re announcing new proposals to help more workers save and test approaches to make savings vehicles more portable and effective for an increasingly mobile workforce.

"And for Americans short of retirement, basic benefits should be just as mobile as everything else is today."

-President Obama, 2016 State of the Union

Today, one out of three workers does not have access to a retirement savings plan, including half of workers at firms with fewer than 50 employees and more than three-quarters of part-time workers. Contractors and temporary employees are often unable to participate in employment-based plans. And workers without access to a plan at work rarely save for retirement: fewer than 10 percent of workers without access to a workplace plan contribute to a retirement savings account on their own. 

Many workers who have a workplace retirement savings plan may have to manage a number of retirement accounts left over from prior employers or complete an often burdensome process to move balances from job to job, assuming their new job allows it. Their careers may be mobile, but too often their retirement accounts and savings are not.

That’s why President Obama is proposing a new program that will provide grants to States and nonprofits to test innovative, more portable approaches to providing retirement and other employment-based benefits. The goal is to encourage development of new models that are portable across employers and can accommodate contributions from multiple employers for an individual worker or independent contractor, as well as contributions from individuals whose work patterns don’t provide reliable amounts of income each month. Good ideas have been raised on both sides of the aisle, but these new approaches are still in their infancy, and we need to figure out what works.

To make it easier for such innovations to occur, we’re also proposing legislation to allow multiple unrelated employers to come together and form pooled 401(k)s, resulting in lower costs and less burden for each employer. Through these “open multiple employer plans” (open MEPs), more small businesses should be able to offer cost-effective plans to their employees, while certain nonprofits and other intermediaries could create pooled plans for contractors and other self-employed workers. As an added benefit, employees moving between employers participating in the same open MEP can continue contributing to the same plan – and receiving employer contributions – even if they switch jobs. And independent contractors participating in a pooled plan using that structure can contribute no matter which client is paying them.

These proposals build on the Administration’s existing proposals to ensure near universal access to workplace retirement accounts by:

• Automatically enrolling approximately 30 million workers without access to workplace plans in IRAs;
• Providing tax credits to encourage small businesses to offer plans and automatically enroll workers in those plans; and
• Ensuring that long-term, part-time workers are allowed to participate in their employer’s retirement plans.

In the absence of Congressional action, we’ve taken administrative steps to promote savings. For example, the Department of Labor proposed regulations and issued guidance facilitating state efforts to create their own retirement savings plans (many of which are modeled on the President’s auto-IRA proposal), and the Department of the Treasury launched myRA, a simple, safe, and no-fee savings option with the same principal-protected return available to members of Congress. IRAs like these offer considerable portability: workers can continue contributing to them even if they switch jobs, although they do not provide for employer contributions. And Treasury and IRS have issued guidance making it easier to roll over and consolidate savings between 401(k)s rather than amassing a number of small accounts over a lifetime.

We’re also working to protect Americans’ hard-earned savings through the Department of Labor’s rule requiring retirement advisers to put their clients’ best interest first, cracking down on the harmful conflicts of interest that sap billions in families’ retirement savings every year. When finalized this year, this rule will protect workers as they consolidate their savings, rolling from one 401(k) to another 401(k) or to an IRA.

So, we’re continuing to make progress toward the vision the President outlined in his State of the Union – for a more portable and secure retirement for all Americans. Today’s proposals represent another step toward that future.

The unemployment rate has been cut in half since peaking in 2009 and the number of Americans looking for work for more than six months is almost 90 percent of the way back to its pre-recession average. The last two years have seen the strongest private-sector job growth since the 1990s and the fastest annual average unemployment rate decline in three decades. As our labor market continues to heal, we have an ideal opportunity to strengthen some of our labor market institutions and address underlying long-term challenges that workers and businesses have faced as our economy has changed during the past several decades. That is why – following his call to expand Americans’ economic security in his State of the Union earlier this week – the President is announcing new proposals to strengthen and modernize our unemployment insurance system, including by providing wage insurance. His proposals will better position the unemployment insurance system by increasing support to unemployed workers and expanding access for part-time, temporary, and low-income workers, but also preventing job losses by encouraging job sharing. New initiatives will also facilitate training and transitions back to employment by providing workers with wage insurance and letting workers receive benefits while they re-tool for new jobs.

A New Proposal to Protect Against Income Losses

Aiding the unemployed is good for our economy: CBO found that aid to the unemployed is among the most effective policies for improving output and employment. But current aid largely takes the form of income transfers during unemployment, rather than policies to help workers transition back into the labor force. Given the low job-finding rate for the long-term unemployed in particular, it is vital that we target more government policies towards helping the unemployed transition into their next job. This is especially important given the long-lasting consequences of long-term joblessness, as those who exhaust their benefits are more likely to drop out of the workforce altogether. 

That’s why the President has proposed providing wage insurance to protect workers from the income loss that too often comes with having to start over. Research shows that on average, experienced workers starting over find themselves earning wages 10 percent or more below what earned in the jobs they lost; and workers with more than twenty years of experience in their prior job face wages that are nearly a quarter less than what they made before.

These hits to workers’ paychecks can persist for years: workers often face lower wages for five to six years after job loss. Wage insurance partially offsets wage losses for workers taking a new job that pays less than the job they lost, and it can help transitioning workers make ends meet on their new salary while working their way up the ladder at their new firm.

In addition, with wage insurance, workers may be better able to take a new job rather than waiting and ending up in long-term unemployment. Research shows that the long-term unemployed have a 20 to 40 percent lower probability of being employed 1 to 2 years in the future compared to the short-term unemployed, so helping workers take a new job sooner rather than later is critical to ensuring that they can continue to support themselves and their families. Evidence suggests that workers transition out of unemployment more quickly when they have wage insurance: a Canadian experiment showed that wage insurance increased entry into full-time work by 4.4 percentage points at the 26-week mark. This is particularly important given that today workers who become unemployed tend to remain unemployed for longer than they have in the past.

Helping Workers Train for New Jobs

In addition to providing financial incentives for workers to transition into new jobs, the President is proposing to make it easier for workers to retool and retrain. The Administration’s proposals include incentives for states to let workers continue to receive unemployment insurance benefits while participating in an apprenticeship or on-the-job training.

As part of providing training, we need to ensure that workers are investing limited time and money in training that will get them a new job and a better job over time. Too often workers lack the information necessary to make smart choices about training. That’s why the President is proposing new Career Navigators who will proactively reach out to all long-term unemployed workers, those who are only able to find part-time work, and those who have dropped out of the labor force altogether to help them find a job, match them with a good training program, and navigate federal services to support them. This proposal will expand intensive counseling services to more than 1 million people annually. Intensive counseling services have been shown to increase recipients’ earnings and decrease the time they spend unemployed. An evaluation of a program in Nevada found that it increased recipients’ earnings by $2,611 over the next 18 months and that it reduced the time participants spent unemployed by 3.1 weeks.

Ensuring Access to Unemployment Insurance

In addition to providing new aid to the unemployed, the President’s proposals would ensure that workers who lose their jobs can access traditional unemployment insurance. In recent years, the share of jobless workers who receive unemployment insurance has been steadily eroding. For the first time in half a century, nine States have reduced the maximum amount of time that unemployed workers can receive benefits to less than six months, shutting out many of the unemployed entirely: around 40 percent of workers exhaust their regular benefits before they can find a new job. In addition, part-time workers and low-income earners can have difficulty accessing the unemployment insurance system because of income and length of employment requirements. And with women more than twice as likely to work today as they were when unemployment insurance was first introduced in the 1930s, the system still does too little to recognize the demands on caretakers who need to leave their job for family reasons.

The President’s proposals follow through on the work done of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Under that act, this Administration provided additional aid through the unemployment insurance system by ensuring that more workers had access to benefits and that the size of those benefits was increased. Over 30 states took up incentives for unemployment insurance reforms in the Act and made sustained changes like extending eligibility to workers who left their job for compelling family circumstances and adding coverage for domestic violence, for caring for a sick family member, and for a relocating spouse. These new proposals would now require that workers who currently fall through the cracks (including part-time workers, intermittent and newer labor market entrants, certain low-income earners, and workers who leave work for compelling family reasons such as to move with a spouse, escape domestic violence, or care for an ill family member) would be covered.

It is also important to ensure that our unemployment insurance system is prepared to respond to future economic contractions. With the economy in better shape today, it is a good time to prepare for future contingencies by making sure that unemployment insurance—one of our frontline defenses for workers who lose their jobs and a key automatic stabilizer for our broader economy—is more responsive to economic conditions. From 2008 to 2013, extended unemployment insurance benefits helped nearly 24 million workers, lifting 2.5 million people out of poverty in 2012 alone.

These increases in unemployment insurance helped maintain household income: from 2007 to 2010, the share of households receiving income from unemployment compensation rose from 4.1 percent to 9.6 percent and the average amount received by these households increased from $4,400 to $8,343. But ten acts of Congress were required to expand and extend these benefits as the economy continued to heal. If our economy went into recession tomorrow, that extra help would not be there for workers without waiting for action by Congress.

Preventing Job Loss in the First Place

Of course, no worker wants to become or stay unemployed, and it is important to take action to prevent workers from losing their jobs in the first place. Work-sharing, otherwise known as short-time compensation, can help avoid mass layoffs by allowing workers to claim unemployment benefits if their hours are shortened. That is why the President’s unemployment insurance proposals include incentives for states to give employers access to work-sharing programs that will encourage employers to reduce hours instead of laying off workers while providing partial unemployment benefits to workers whose hours are cut.

As our economy evolves, it is important that we build an unemployment insurance system that best serves workers in the modern economy. That starts with policies that help prevent job losses and continues with unemployment benefits that help workers who lose their jobs make ends meet while they are unemployed and then transition back into the workplace. The President’s proposals to reform the unemployment insurance system will help do just that.

Today, the Department of Transportation (DOT) is moving one step closer to a future in which self-driving -- or autonomous -- vehicles transform how we move while improving the safety of our streets. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx is announcing a Smart City Challenge that will award up to $40 million to one American city to serve as an example of what is possible in transportation by using data, technology, and innovation to shape how people and goods move in an urban environment.

This Smart City Challenge will keep America at the forefront of transportation innovation. Cities across the country, in collaboration with the private sector and universities, will compete to win this funding based on the strength of their data-driven visions for the deployment of innovative technologies in their communities. This includes connected vehicles that can talk to each other or the surrounding infrastructure, smart sensors, and self-driving cars, as well as the partnerships cities can mobilize to pilot these technologies at scale. Today, DOT is also announcing a public-private collaboration with Vulcan, Inc., which intends to award up to an additional $10 million to the winning city to support innovative programs designed to meet the significant transportation challenges of the future. 

In October of this year, President Obama released the latest update of his Strategy for American Innovation, which highlighted the advances in computing, sensors, and machine learning that, in the hands of America’s innovators, have made autonomous vehicles possible. President Obama also proposed doubling federal investment to help bring these technologies to commercial deployment, given that autonomous vehicles, coupled with soon-to-be-ubiquitous vehicle-to-vehicle communication could save thousands of lives annually, give new independence to those like the elderly or the blind who until now have been unable to drive, and help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And for the average American who spends 50 minutes a day commuting to and from work, autonomous and connected vehicles could free up hundreds of hours a year for other pursuits. 

The types of advanced vehicles under development will interact with “smart cities” that use state-of-the-art sensors to monitor and adapt to traffic flows in real time, accelerating the flow of people throughout the city. Today’s announcement follows recent rounds of investment by DOT in Connected Vehicle Pilots in multiple American cities, which were announced in September of this year alongside the White House Smart Cities Initiative to help communities use advanced technologies to tackle pressing local challenges such as traffic congestion. 

Throughout the history of autonomous and connected vehicles, federal investments have helped catalyze private-sector advances. At the turn of the millennium, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Grand Challenges brought together researchers, university students, and the private sector in a race to build driverless cars capable of navigating long distances over difficult terrain. These challenges set off a wave of academic and private-sector innovation. As technology in cities grows smarter, and autonomous and connected vehicles mature, continued federal investment and leadership -- such as today’s announcement by DOT-- will accelerate this transformation and increase its positive impacts.

But the federal government cannot do this alone. Bringing to life a city-scale pilot of autonomous and connected vehicles will require the leadership of city leaders, innovators, researchers, and citizen pioneers across the country, working together to develop and put forward ideas for realizing a future of advanced vehicles. Cities will need to partner with the private sector, state and federal governments, and researchers to build this vision. Autonomous and connected vehicles have the potential to transform lives and the global economy, and we need an all-hands effort to ensure that the United States remains at the leading edge of developing and testing this technology.

Over the past six years, under President Obama’s leadership the United States has expanded broadband access, bringing millions of people online and creating significant new economic, educational and social opportunities.

Since the President took office, investments from the Federal government have helped deploy or upgrade more than 110,000 miles of network infrastructure, and more than 45 million additional Americans have adopted broadband Internet. And as a country we’ve made high-speed wireless coverage available to 98% of Americans. Over the past several months, the Administration has doubled down on these efforts. In July, we launched the new ConnectHOME program in twenty-seven cities and one tribal nation to help bring Internet to more than 275,000 low-income households.

But more needs to be done. While our wireless coverage for handheld devices is among the best in the world, a recent analysis from the Council of Economic Advisers highlighted that nearly 75 million Americans don’t have a high-speed Internet connection at home, a critical measure of high-speed Internet access and use. As the map at right suggests, rural parts of the country lag behind cities and more densely populated suburbs.

Even where broadband uptake is high, there’s room for improvement. As the chart below highlights, nearly 51 million Americans cannot purchase a wired broadband connection with download speeds of at least 25 Mbps, and only 63 percent have access to speeds of 100 Mbps or more. To bring better, faster broadband to more Americans, we need to significantly increase competition and investment.

That's why last March the President launched the Broadband Opportunity Council, a whole-of-government effort to expand broadband deployment and adoption, with a focus on bringing broadband to underserved communities and encouraging new entrants and new investments to improve broadband quality and service. Chaired by the Department of Commerce and the Department of Agriculture, the Broadband Opportunity Council spent five months reviewing every major Federal program that provides support for broadband, from the Department of Housing and Urban Development and Health and Human Services to the Department of Justice. Last month, the Council submitted its recommendations to the President for his review, and today, the White House is releasing its findings.

The Council makes four broad recommendations:

(1) Modernize Federal programs to expand program support for broadband investments.

(2) Empower communities with tools and resources to attract broadband investment and promote meaningful use.

(3) Promote increased broadband deployment and competition through expanded access to Federal assets.

(4) Improve data collection, analysis and research on broadband.

Broadband is a top priority for President Obama and we will be pushing forward aggressively to implement these recommendations over the next 18 months. Among other actions, Federal agencies are committed to:

• Modernizing Federal programs valued at approximately $10 billion to include broadband as an eligible program expenditure, such as the Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Community Facilities (CF) program, which will help communities around the country bring broadband to health clinics and recreation centers;
• Creating an online inventory of data on Federal assets, such as Department of the Interior (DOI) telecommunications towers, that can help support faster and more economical broadband deployments to remote areas of the country;
• Streamlining the applications for programs and broadband permitting processes to support broadband deployment and foster competition; and
• Creating a portal for information on Federal broadband funding and loan programs to help communities easily identify resources as they seek to expand access to broadband.

But to bring faster, lower price broadband into more homes will take more than the Federal government. That’s why the Administration is calling on the private sector, local, state and Tribal governments, community organizations and foundations to work with us to tackle some of the big challenges, like opening up critical data sources around the country and helping communities become ‘broadband ready’ to encourage more investment.

You’ll be hearing more about ways to get involved in the weeks and months ahead.

Today, the White House is releasing a report that explains how this critical program works, who it helps, and its importance for working families.

How the Program Works

SSDI is an insurance program that workers pay for while they are working. If a worker can no longer maintain substantial employment due to a severe disability, SSDI replaces a portion of lost income. Beneficiaries earn coverage under the Social Security system by working and paying into the system.

Most individuals receiving SSDI earned middle-class wages before becoming disabled, and beneficiaries paid into Social Security for an average of 22 years before becoming eligible for SSDI. To receive SSDI benefits, workers must have a significant and recent work history, in addition to a serious disability that prevents them from performing substantial work for a sustained period of time. These benefits are modest but they help families pay bills and put food on the table.

Who the Program Helps

Today, more than 150 million Americans are covered by the SSDI program, which means they would receive benefits if they became severely disabled and could not work and earn a living. As with Social Security retirement benefits, SSDI is available to Americans who have a significant work history and have paid a portion of their paychecks into the program. In total, 11 million Americans receive SSDI benefits, including 9 million worker-beneficiaries and 2 million dependent children and spouses of worker-beneficiaries. About one million military veterans receive SSDI. Most SSDI worker-beneficiaries worked most or all of their adult lives before becoming disabled and half of SSDI beneficiaries attended college. Disability insurance protects workers in all sectors of the economy, with large shares of SSDI beneficiaries coming from the service, manufacturing, and retail sectors.

Benefits are Modest but Critical

Disability benefits are modest — only about one-third of what beneficiaries earned before their disability. In their highest-earning five years prior to receiving SSDI, beneficiaries earned about $42,000 on average, expressed in 2014 wage levels. By comparison, SSDI benefits average $13,980 per year.

While modest, these benefits make a meaningful difference for people with disabilities who are no longer able to work. Overall, SSDI comprises more than half (58 percent) of SSDI beneficiaries’ family income.  SSDI benefits keep 3 million Americans out of poverty and reduce the depth of poverty for another 1.9 million people.

Growth in Disability Beneficiaries Has Slowed

As the population and labor force have grown and aged, so too has the number of Americans who are covered by and receive disability insurance. While the SSDI program has grown over the past 35 years, this growth has slowed significantly and is projected to remain steady. Most of this growth is due to well-documented demographic changes, including a growing and aging population and increases in women's labor force participation. As more women joined the labor force and paid into Social Security, more women achieve insured status and are protected if they become disabled. 

Congressional Action Needed to Avert Deep Benefit Cuts

SSDI beneficiaries could face a deep and abrupt 19 percent reduction in their disability insurance benefits in 2016 if lawmakers fail to act to address the long-foreseen shortfall in the program’s finances. The shortfall was caused by a long-foreseen increase in the number of beneficiaries as population growth, the aging of the population, and increases in women's labor force participation raised the number of workers who contribute to and qualify for the program. The Social Security Trust Fund overall currently has enough money to provide full benefits to both DI beneficiaries and retirees for almost the next two decades, but funding across the two programs is out of balance.

The President has proposed a simple solution that policymakers have taken many times in the past on a bipartisan basis: rebalance the Social Security program in a way that ensures workers with disabilities, retirees, and survivors receive the full amount of earned and expected benefits while policymakers develop longer-term policies to strengthen the Social Security program as a whole.  The Administration looks forward to working with Congress to ensure that workers with disabilities and their families receive the full benefits they have earned and need.

Shaun Donovan is the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. Jeff Zients is the Director of the National Economic Council and Assistant to the President for Economic Policy.

Americans are the most productive workforce in the world, and to outcompete other countries, it is vital that they have all the job training and other support they need to tap into new opportunities that the 21st century economy presents.

That is why Congress needs to reauthorize the Trade Adjustment Assistance program (TAA). 

What is Trade Adjustment Assistance?

For more than 40 years, Trade Adjustment Assistance has helped support U.S. workers who are adversely affected by globalization and trade by providing job training support, career counseling, wage supplements for older workers, job search and reallocation allowances, and income support for workers in training programs.

How does it work?

If trade is believed to have played a significant part in job losses, then an employer, a group of three workers, a union or worker representative, or an American Job Center representative can apply for TAA benefits on behalf of the affected workers.

Who has it helped?

Since 1974, 2.2 million American workers have benefited from this program, which provides workers with opportunities to obtain the skills, credentials, resources, and support they need to obtain good jobs in an in-demand occupation — and keep them. For example, in Fiscal Year 2014, nearly 77 percent of TAA participants found a job within 6 months of completing the program, and 90 percent of those who found work retained their jobs 6 months later.

TAA provides a critical lifeline to our workers, but if Congress fails to act, the program will expire on September 30, 2015.

Fortunately, there is a bill before Congress that locks in place a robust TAA program for the next six years — giving an estimated 100,000 workers a year access to TAA benefits by:

• Making workers eligible for up to 130 weeks of benefits that helps these workers pay their bills while they engage in a two-year training program
• Restoring case management and employment services, which are critical to helping workers find reemployment
• Bringing back coverage for workers affected by trade with countries that are not party to our free trade agreements, like India and China. This would restore expansions of the TAA program that the President first signed into law in 2009, but have since expired — and that benefited roughly 250,000 workers when they were in place
• Making service sector workers — not just manufacturing workers — are eligible for TAA, restoring another provision the President signed into law in 2009 that expired at the end of 2013. Importantly, these expansions would be applied retroactively — so that an estimated 17,500 service workers who were denied benefits in the last 17 months can apply for assistance

TAA legislation has long received bipartisan support, passing with ample support from Members of Congress in 2011, including unanimous support from Democrats — 125 of whom are still in Congress today. However, this go-round, some Members are considering letting this vital program expire. 

Secretary of Labor Tom Perez sent this letter to Congress explaining why we can’t do that to American workers:   

If nothing else, here are three facts you should know about the current TAA bill in Congress: 

1. It expands the program to allow applications from workers who cannot currently receive assistance, including service workers and those affected by trade with countries like China and India, with whom we don’t have Free Trade Agreements — making 24,000 to 30,000 additional workers a year eligible for the program.
2. By more than doubling the cap on training funds that states can spend on workers, the bill provides more than enough funding to provide full benefits to all eligible workers who might apply for TAA assistance.
3. Without action, TAA will expire on September 30, 2015 — and this bill offers our best opportunity to restore and expand a vital lifeline for American workers, and it would do so for a full six years.

Now that you know about TAA, take a deep dive into a few other trade terms you might be wondering about here.

Then head to obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/trade to find out more about the President's trade policy. 

The guide is part of the Build America Investment Initiative, an Administration-wide effort to help communities design and finance more and better infrastructure projects. As dozens of studies have suggested, the United States is currently underinvesting in our infrastructure by hundreds of billions of dollars per year. And by 2045, our population will grow by 70 million people, and the demands on our infrastructure systems will grow in parallel. For example, we currently move more than 60 tons of freight per person per year – and by 2045, that will grow by 45 percent.

But it’s not just population and economic growth that will put pressure on U.S. infrastructure. Climate change will also test the strength and endurance of the highways we drive on, the airports we fly out of, and the dams, reservoirs, canals and water facilities that provide water to our homes, businesses and farms. The National Association of Clean Water Agencies, for example, estimates that adaptation to climate change will cost water utilities between $500 billion and a $1 trillion over the next 35 years. Given such challenges, we need to be building smarter by anticipating future demands and integrating new technologies and design methods.

That’s why the President launched the Build America Investment Initiative in July 2014 to help the federal government partner with local and state governments and the private sector to finance infrastructure projects and improve how they are designed and built. And communities are already stepping up. In Maryland, Prince George’s County just launched a first-of-its-kind public private partnership to install green stormwater infrastructure, including rain barrels, green roofs, and permeable pavement. The new partnership will support minority business hiring and provide career training and mentoring for workers while installing state of the art systems that improve water quality and build resilience to flooding and other impacts of climate change. It’s an example of how a project can achieve multiple objectives, like economic growth, environmental protection, and community health, all at the same time.

Today’s roundtable – which the White House is holding in partnership with the Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation – is designed to highlight and learn from projects like these. Over the past five years, the Obama Administration has worked hand in hand with local and regional partners like Prince George’s County to plan, design and build a range of infrastructure projects. Through the Partnership for Sustainable Communities, for example, the Department of Transportation, Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Environmental Protection Agency teamed up to provide integrated funding, technical assistance and support to places like Bridgeport, Connecticut, and Memphis, Tennessee, fostering more livable, walkable, healthy and resilient communities. Through our response to Hurricane Sandy, the federal government partnered with Northeastern states, cities and towns to rebuild roads, schools, electric utilities and add or restore other critical assets, like flood protections in the New York subway system. And through the work of the President’s Task Force on Climate Preparedness and Resilience, governors, mayors, and tribal leaders from all over the country advised the Administration on how the Federal Government can modernize grant programs and better incentivize resilient infrastructure.

These initiatives demonstrate the benefits of close local, state and federal collaboration and of smart planning. They also helped the Federal government learn what makes for good project planning – and inspired the roundtable and guide that we’re publishing today. The guide includes an extensive list of all federal programs that can help local, state and tribal governments in the early stages of a project’s life. It also includes a set of principles for planning and design that we hope will be a resource for communities around the country as they build projects that will define growth and development in the decades ahead. 

Watch on YouTube

In his 2015 State of the Union address, President Obama outlined his plan to make sure that new educational data remains safe. Urging action, the President said that Congress needed to pass legislation that better meets the growing threat of cyber attacks and identity theft. While speaking at the Federal Trade Commission in January, the President discussed protecting both parents and children from cyber threats.

“We need a structure that ensures that information is not being gathered without us as parents or the kids knowing it,” he said. “We want our kids’ privacy protected -- wherever they sign in or log on, including at school.”

That’s why we are pleased to see Representatives Luke Messer (R-IN) and Jared Polis (D-CO) answer the President’s State of the Union call to enact new protections for K-12 students’ data to ensure that classrooms can embrace technology with confidence.

Introduced yesterday, The Student Digital Privacy and Parental Rights Act is an important bipartisan step, building upon existing momentum from industry leaders committed to ensuring educational data is not misused by providers or third parties, and carrying the strong endorsement of privacy advocates, the private sector, and associations representing parents and educators. 

The White House commends Representatives Messer and Polis on their leadership in this important cause.  We also note the work of Senator Blumenthal in making this effort bicameral, and look forward to working with both chambers in the months ahead to advance legislation that provides meaningful privacy protections and helps spur more innovation in the way we educate.

Vice President Joe Biden and Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf talk to workers at Pacific Gas and Electric, in Oakland, California. April 10, 2015. (Official White House Photo by David Lienemann)

Last year, the President laid out a vision for our job training system that – as he explained – “trains our workers first based on what employers are telling us they’re hiring for and helps business design the training programs so that we’re creating a pipeline into jobs that are actually out there.” This month, the Administration is taking two key steps to realize that vision – both by partnering with industry and by reforming our own job training system. 

Partnering with Industry:

White House Convening on Upskilling Low-Wage Workers to Better Paying Jobs

First, we are taking steps with industry by working with employers, labor leaders, foundations, educators, tech innovators, non-profits and others to double down on practices that enable more front-line workers to advance. For one example of these practices, consider the PowerPathways training class at PG&E in California.  Like many other companies in the growing utility industry, PG&E has been faced with significant shortages in skilled workers. So the company has worked closely with labor partners, educators, and the local community to provide more workers with the skills the industry needs to hire and promote. 

Last week, Vice President Biden visited PG&E, and as he explained in his remarks about the program:

That means one of the guys on this truck here may not just be coding, may end up being one of the managers in the corporate headquarters. For real. This is a real genuine opportunity. 

There is no automatic limit set as to what can happen. It’s good for business, but it’s also good for employees….More and more companies around the country are recognizing the importance of helping their entry-level employees gain the skills to move to more senior jobs and management positions within those very companies.

PG&E is not alone. As the economy continues to improve, the unemployment rate is declining, job creation is growing, and as a result more and more companies need skilled workers. But still too many workers in low-wage jobs may feel stuck.

In January, the President called on employers, educators, labor unions, foundations, and tech innovators to equip more front-line workers with the skills they need to advance into better paying jobs without having to leave their current jobs to go back to school full time. And next week, on April 24, the White House will bring together 150 employers, labor leaders, foundations, educators, tech innovators, non-profits and others who are answering the President’s call to action by committing to implement practices that enable more front-line workers to advance. The Vice President will be there to highlight those who are leading the way, and Secretary Tom Perez, Secretary Arne Duncan, Secretary Penny Pritzker and I are looking forward to hosting this working session with so many leaders who have committed to take action.  

Learn more about the President's call to action here.

Reforming our Federal Workforce System

Second, we are taking steps to reform the Federal job training system to better prepare workers for the jobs employers are hiring for.  Last July, the President signed into law the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) – the most significant reform to our Federal workforce system in nearly 20 years. The same day, the Vice President released his Job-Driven Training report, recommending improvements to our Federal training programs, including stronger employer engagement, the use of work-based learning approaches like apprenticeship, accountability for employment outcomes, and regional partnerships.

This week, we are delivering on key elements of that vision – with proposed rules implementing WIOA that will move our entire system to be more job-driven. We know that some training programs still aren’t working well enough, and we are taking aggressive action to focus them on partnerships that train for in-demand skills and that match participants with in-demand jobs. The proposed rules published yesterday include reforms that will affect over $7 billion in annual training funding, and programs that serve approximately 20 million Americans each year, by: 

• Ensuring Accountability for Employment Results. Programs that did not previously report employment and earnings outcomes will now be required to do so, and all core programs will report on standardized outcomes so that their results can more easily be compared.
• Improving Transparency for Job Seekers to Help Them Make Better Choices. The new law requires that all training providers publish a scorecard with information on employment and earnings outcomes so that any American worker looking to invest time and money in training can go online and see which programs have the best chance at giving them a leg up.
• Strengthening employer engagement and service to businesses. We are implementing a new accountability measure for whether businesses are served effectively by the workforce system. The law will also increase opportunities for work-based learning, including on-the-job training and Registered Apprenticeships.
• Enhancing Coordination and Collaboration across Programs. We are implementing provisions of the law that require unified State planning across programs and co-location of more programs in American Job Centers. These reforms will result in better strategic planning and improved communication across the workforce system.

Our aim is that these reforms will create more stories like Danielle King’s. After losing her job in the Great Recession and spending months homeless, Danielle was advised to attend a training program that gave her the skills to get an in-demand job as a machine operator making $20 an hour. Enrolling in that program – supported by the Federal workforce system – gave Danielle guidance about what jobs employers were hiring for and what training made the most sense for her. 

In the coming months, we’ll continue to build upon the opportunities and recommendations identified in the Vice President’s report on Job-Driven Training by advancing federal reforms and public-private partnerships. Are you interested in providing feedback on the proposed rules? Click here.

Trade authority has a long bipartisan history, dating back to President Franklin Roosevelt. In the decades since the New Deal Congress passed the first trade negotiating legislation, Congress has renewed and modernized that authority 18 different times, under both Democratic and Republican Presidents alike. 

Through Trade Promotion Authority, Congress does three important things:

• It defines Congress’s specific objectives for U.S. trade negotiators to follow when crafting an agreement.
• It lays out how trade negotiators should work with Congress before and during the negotiations.
• It puts in place the congressional procedures for legislation on trade agreements.

Congress last passed TPA legislation in 2002, and an update is more than overdue.

Passing a modernized TPA is important for two reasons.

First, it will help us close the deal on negotiations in the Asia-Pacific on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (or TPP), the most progressive trade agreement in history. It is an important part of the President’s middle-class economics agenda. TPA provides a critical path toward opening more new markets to American goods and services — and supporting the good jobs and wages that come from exports.

The President has made clear he’ll settle for nothing less than a deal that locks in American values, like tough environmental and labor standards. That’s good for our economy, our businesses, and most importantly, for our workers.

TPP will be the greenest trade agreement in history — protecting oceans and combating wildlife trafficking, illegal fishing, and illegal logging across a vast swath of the globe. The countries in the agreement produce $2 out of every $5 of global economic output. And big economies have big impacts on the environment, so this standard really matters.

TPP will also raise labor standards across our trading partners and help raise wages here at home. That’s because enforceable requirements on minimum wages, hours of work, and occupational safety and health are at the center of the agreement. And that’s because trade jobs are good jobs, paying up to 18 percent more on average than non-trade jobs.

TPP will be good for our national security, too — increasing America’s presence in the fastest-growing region of the world and bolstering the economic vitality at home that underpins our military strength. Failure to get TPP over the finish line could relegate us to a future where we sit on the sidelines, letting China write rules with lower standards that diminish our relevance in Asia.

America is stronger, at home and abroad, when we write the rules; when our workers compete on a level playing field; and when our iconic products and services are more easily sold to the 95 percent of potential customers who live outside our borders. That’s what TPP does. It levels the playing field for American workers. And when American workers can compete fairly, we win.

A modern TPA will help the President get this done. That’s the first reason a modern TPA matters so much.

The second reason is that it holds future Administrations to the higher standards President Obama has placed at the center of the current negotiations.

Today’s bill, for the first time, reflects the bipartisan agreement on May 10, 2007 — spearheaded by House Democrats, led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi as well as Congressmen Charlie Rangel and Sandy Levin — that included groundbreaking provisions concerning the protection of labor, the environment, and intellectual property rights. The TPA legislation in Congress will require future Administrations to take up the mantle of labor and environmental protections that the Obama administration is fighting for.

No trade negotiating authority law has ever enshrined the high standards the President has been championing. We now have the opportunity to change that.

The new bill also updates how we deal with issues we could hardly have contemplated at the turn of the century. The last update to negotiation authority predates much of the explosion of activity on the Internet and the emergence of the digital economy. Facebook and Twitter did not even exist, the iPod was brand new, and most Americans were logging onto the web through a dial-up connection or had no connectivity at all. And it didn’t address emerging issues affecting our ability to compete in the global economy, such as leveling the playing field between state-owned enterprises and our private firms. The new TPA bill does that.

So, today’s bill helps us move forward on trade in a smart, transparent way by:

• Enforcing our values. Just two decades ago, the idea that labor and environmental protections should be core, enforceable provisions in our trade agreements was at best an afterthought. Since that time, progressive voices have called time and again for action to put labor and environment on par with other commercial commitments. This bill will authorize that for the first time in history.
• Holding future Presidents accountable. This TPA bill is Congress’s best chance to ensure that, no matter who the President is, he or she will be held accountable for ensuring that America’s trade policy reflects progressive values.
  • It gives Congress new ability to revoke trade authority procedures from trade agreements if the Executive Branch has failed or refused to notify or consult with the Congress and the public in accordance with congressional guidelines.
  • It includes strong sovereignty safeguards that make absolutely clear that nothing in our trade agreement can change U.S. law without congressional approval.
  • It requires that trade agreements encourage good governance and rule of law in an effort to promote respect for human rights.
  • It addresses currency matters as part of a broader effort to level the playing field for American workers and businesses.
  • It includes tough new directives on how our trading partners treat the flow of digital trade that will help promote a free and open internet.
• Increasing transparency. This TPA bill will take additional steps to ensure that Congress and the public play a meaningful role in our trade negotiations. Today’s TPA requires detailed and comprehensive public summaries of American negotiating objectives, and when the agreement is inked, the text must be made publicly available online 60 days before the President signs any agreement. It strengthens Congress’s role in overseeing negotiations and creates House and Senate Advisory Groups on Negotiations to consult and provide advice to ongoing negotiations; and requires regularly scheduled meetings. And it creates a Chief Transparency Officer to consult with Congress on transparency policy, coordinate transparency in trade negotiations, and engage and assist the public.

Today, we are taking the next step in President Obama’s historic push for the strongest consumer protections in America’s history. As the President called for in February, the Department of Labor is proposing to update rules to protect Americans saving for retirement and crack down on conflicts of interest in retirement advice that are costing middle-class and working families billions of dollars every year.

The President takes a backseat to no one when it comes to strengthening consumer protections. That’s why he fought to create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), an independent watchdog that has already enhanced safeguards across mortgage, credit card, debt collection, and student loan servicing markets, while putting more than $5 billion back in the pockets of more than 15 million wronged consumers through enforcement actions. Recently, the CFPB took an important step toward cracking down on abusive practices in payday lending, yet another example of how this critical consumer watchdog is delivering for the American people.

The Department of Labor’s proposed rule adds to those protections, by reflecting a simple, commonsense principle: Retirement advisers should put their clients first and give advice that is in their clients’ best interest.

Too often today, that’s not the case. Retirement advisers and Wall Street brokers can direct their customers to products with higher costs and lower returns simply because they get backdoor payments or hidden fees, often buried in fine print, that encourage them to recommend these bad investments. As hard as it may be to believe, under the current rules, advisers can recommend products that are good for their bottom line but not as good for their clients.

That’s because the safeguards in this area have fallen woefully behind the way people save for retirement. When the rules were last overhauled almost 40 years ago, Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) had just been created and employer-based 401(k)s did not even exist. Today, American workers have more than $7 trillion invested in IRAs and more than $4 trillion in 401(k)-type plans. For that reason, getting workers good advice is more important than ever.

To be clear, many advisers are hardworking women and men who got into this line of work to help families achieve retirement security, and already provide high-quality advice that is in their clients’ best interest. Nonetheless, the losses to some middle-class and working families from the existing loopholes are huge.

Poor investment advice stemming from conflicts of interest sap about 1 percentage point of returns every year, and — like compounding interest — these compounding losses mount over time. Over the course of 35 years, a person getting conflicted advice could lose more than a quarter of their expected savings relative to someone getting advice in their best interest. In other words, instead of a $10,000 retirement investment growing to more than $38,000 over that period after adjusting for inflation, it would be just over $27,500.

That’s unacceptable and it has to change.

Today’s proposed rule would ensure that the people providing you with retirement investment advice are working in your best interest. And it includes streamlined, flexible ways to comply with that goal, for example by allowing advisers to enter into a new and enforceable best interest contract before they can receive any payments that might bias their advice. It’s a straightforward agreement so you know you’ll get advice on investing your retirement savings that puts your interests first. 

The many advisers already putting their customers’ best interest first deserve the level playing field for offering quality advice that this rule will provide. In 2010, the Department of Labor put forward a draft of a rule to attempt to create that level playing field — but after significant feedback on how the proposed rule would impact the market for retirement advice, DOL withdrew that proposal and went back to the drawing board. Since then, we’ve worked with industry, consumer groups, retirement advocates, academics, and the public to gather feedback and rework the rule.

Today’s proposal, through enhancements like the best interest contract exemption, makes major strides toward addressing the concerns that were raised. We look forward to receiving additional feedback over the 75-day comment period that will help shape a better, stronger rule that minimizes burdens for those giving good advice. We are committed to getting it right.

But while we expect plenty of good faith input from all manner of commenters, for some special interests and their allies in Congress, the only good rule would be no rule at all. We want to make very clear that inaction is not an acceptable outcome of this process. We believe that any adviser acting in their clients’ best interest should support this rulemaking. And those who aren’t already committed to those same high standards will have to start putting their clients best interest first.

America’s families are losing $17 billion of their hard-earned retirement savings annually — representing tens of thousands of dollars for many individual families over the course of a lifetime of saving. We should all agree that financial advisers should always act in their clients’ best interest. Today marks an important milestone toward that change.

Friday, as part of this effort, Secretaries Vilsack and Perez announced $200 million for projects designed to identify the most effective strategies to help participants in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) improve their skills and find jobs.

These pilot projects will test a range of strategies to determine the best ways to help SNAP participants get and keep good jobs – which is the right way to help them move towards self-sufficiency and ultimately reduce SNAP program costs, rather than across the board cuts. Over 80% of SNAP recipients are seniors, children, disabled individuals, or people already working but earning such low wages they still need help affording food. Across the board cuts -- like recently proposed block grants -- means slashing already-low benefits for these recipients, or cutting some of them off of the program altogether. A better way to save money in the SNAP program is to focus on the less than 20% of recipients who are struggling to find work and help them get a good job.

In doing so, the pilots announced last week build on the Vice President’s report released last July, which included a job-driven checklist that is being embedded in our core workforce programs and is being applied to all competitive job training grants moving forward -- representing about $1 billion a year in Federal funding.

The SNAP education and training pilots awarded last week feature job-driven strategies such as intensive sector-based approaches in which training programs are developed with a group of regional employers hiring in similar occupations. The program also supports career navigation models that help workers understand the fields where available jobs are located and work-based learning.

For example, in California, the County of Fresno will pilot a comprehensive two-generation approach that includes training paired with coaching on parenting skills, nutrition and health, and financial literacy designed to ensure that the program helps both parents and their children.

Illinois will build on a small-scale program for disadvantaged workers, spreading this to seven regions and testing the results. The program uses holistic assessment to place participants in either an accelerated and integrated adult education program, a bridge program from basic skills to technical training, or directly into technical training and a work-based learning pathway.

These pilots are creating robust networks that connect community-based organizations, local workforce boards, American Job Centers, community colleges, career-technical schools, adult education providers, and other service providers.

The pilots also reflect some of the best practices that the Administration is promoting related to the President’s upskilling initiative -- which is about equipping front-line workers who are currently employed with the skills and opportunities they need for advancement, without needing to leave their jobs to go back to school. Several grantees, are developing accelerated learning and bridge programs that equip low-wage workers with technical training required for in-demand, better-paying jobs.

In January, the Administration announced commitments to promote upskilling by a coalition of business organizations and 30 leading employers. Others are ready to join and in the coming weeks, we will be convening employers, labor leaders, foundations, educators, and tech innovators, who are making new commitments to front-line workers’ training and advancement, at the White House to share best practices and develop local and national partnerships. The Administration has also proposed a $200 million American Technical Training Fund that would help to expand and scale accelerated programs for Americans to upgrade their skills for middle-class jobs in high-demand fields.

The awards announced Friday are an important step in developing and testing the most effective strategies to help low-income workers find work and progress into better-paying jobs and careers. This is vital to the work of growing the economy in a way that supports the middle class and those still working to get there.

Cecilia Muñoz is Assistant to the President and Director of the Domestic Policy Council.

Jeff Zients is the Director of the National Economic Council and Assistant to the President for Economic Policy.

“The work you do here is one of the reasons why Boise is one of our top cities for tech startups,” the President said during a visit to Boise State University’s New Product Development Lab. The lab and its community actively foster innovation — and they do so with a culture of inclusivity. As the President remarked during his visit, “[W]hen everybody is participating and given a shot, there’s nothing we cannot do. … Because when we've got everybody on the field, that's when you win games.”

Our entrepreneurial economy is the envy of the world. But we need to do more to make sure that we are tapping America’s full entrepreneurial potential — drawing on talented Americans from all backgrounds and locations.

According to surveys, 87 percent of U.S. venture capital-backed business founders are white, 12 percent are Asian, and less than 1 percent are African American. Less than 3 percent of companies that receive venture capital funding have a woman CEO. Last year, minority-owned firms represented only 7 percent of the entrepreneurs that presented their business pitches to angel funders, and accounted for just 4 percent of the angel funding community. Only 6 percent of partners at venture capital firms are women. This is not good for our economy and it wastes talent.

Funding fuels new companies. And venture capital investments — one indicator of access to entrepreneurial opportunities — are heavily concentrated in a few coastal metro areas, like San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Boston, Los Angeles, and New York City. While there is evidence that more communities like Boise are emerging as hubs of entrepreneurial activity, access to capital can be hard to come by in too many locations – last year, for example, more venture capital was deployed in California than in all other states combined.

To maintain our lead as the best place on the planet to start and scale a great company, we must ensure that vibrant startup ecosystems emerge in every corner of America and that all Americans, including those underrepresented in entrepreneurship like women and people of color, are both encouraged and able to fully contribute their entrepreneurial talents and access resources. 

That’s why we are excited to announce the first-ever White House Demo Day to take place later this summer. In the coming weeks, we will release more details on the event. Unlike a private-sector Demo Day where entrepreneurs pitch funders, this event will “demo” individuals’ and teams’ success stories — it will highlight stories from across the country that exemplify how we can “grow the pie” by including everyone in our startup economy. The day will also lift up best practices from all sectors that are aimed at making sure that all entrepreneurs get a crack at success. As Vice President Joe Biden said earlier today, we risk losing our competitive edge if we continue to neglect our full entrepreneurial potential by relying on a handful of people in a handful of places. We have to get all of our best talent off the bench and onto the field.

The White House Demo Day will build on steps the Administration is already taking to empower a diversity of entrepreneurs from around the country to launch and scale innovative companies. For example, on Monday, the President announced TechHire, a bold multi-sector effort and call to action to expand hiring practices for companies in critical need of tech workforce talent and empower Americans with the skills they need — through universities and community colleges but also non-traditional approaches like “coding bootcamps,” and high-quality online courses — that can rapidly train workers for a good-paying job, often in just a few months. And the U.S. Small Business Administration recently made 50 awards to some of America’s most promising startup accelerator programs outside the usual tech hubs — including TECenter at Boise State. The President’s Fiscal Year 2016 Budget includes a proposal to reauthorize a successful $1.5 billion state-based capital access program called the State Small Business Credit Initiative (SSBCI), with a renewed focus on promoting inclusive entrepreneurship and strengthening regional startup communities.

Why are we focused on inclusive entrepreneurship? Because the economic argument is as compelling as the moral one. U.S. Census data show that minority entrepreneurs are the fastest-growing entrepreneurial segment in the country — in the decade between 1997 and 2007, minority-owned firms grew four times faster than their non-minority-owned counterparts. Despite the existing barriers in place, women are majority owners of an estimated ten million businesses — or 36 percent of all businesses in the United States — with annual economic impact estimated at nearly $3 trillion. We can’t afford to leave entrepreneurial talent that exists in every region of the country untapped and unfunded.

Promoting inclusive entrepreneurship is an effort that has to come from every sector. Companies, foundations, universities, and other players in the entrepreneurial ecosystem are increasingly recognizing the role they can play in tapping America’s full entrepreneurial potential, and many are stepping up.

Participate in White House Demo Day

Get involved! Are you a university, a foundation, a company, an accelerator, or another key player in our nation’s entrepreneurship ecosystem? If you want to take new actions to ensure that America taps its full entrepreneurial potential, we want to hear from you. Tell us about the commitments you’re ready to announce by filling out this online form, which tracks some of the themes we plan to highlight at White House Demo Day:

• Growing Local Innovation Economies: What new steps will you take to increase the geographic diversity of startup activity and investment?
• Training Startup-Ready Students: What new steps will you take to ensure that all college and university students are exposed to the inspiration, opportunity, and experience to choose an entrepreneurial path?
• Expanding On-Ramps to Entrepreneurship: Looking across the American ecosystem of business incubators, startup accelerators, tech meetups, and other “on-ramps” to entrepreneurship, what new steps will you take to increase participation by all, including underrepresented groups?
• Connecting Diverse Talent to Capital: What new steps will you take to ensure that all entrepreneurs with investable innovations have a straight shot at securing seed and growth capital?
• Local Open Gatherings: How are you bringing these communities together locally to work on the challenges and opportunities?

Introduce Us to Dazzling Entrepreneurs

If you know an entrepreneur or founding team who exemplifies America’s role as the best place in the world to start and scale a company and who would wow the crowd at the White House Demo Day, tell us about them here. We look forward to hearing from you!

Yesterday, speaking to nearly 2,000 local leaders at the National League of Cities annual meeting, President Obama announced his TechHire initiative, a new campaign to work with communities to get more Americans rapidly trained for well-paying technology jobs.

The United States has about 5 million open jobs today, more than at any point since 2001. Over half a million of those job openings are in information technology (IT) fields like software development, network administration, user-interface design and cybersecurity – many of which did not even exist just a decade ago. The average salary in a job that requires IT skills – whether in manufacturing, advertising, retail, or banking – is 50 percent higher than the average private-sector American job.  

In his remarks, the President emphasized that these open jobs are an economic development issue. When those jobs go unfilled, it’s a loss for American workers, for employers eager to hire, for our regional economies and for American competitiveness. Helping U.S. companies fill these critical jobs and empowering more Americans to train for and get these jobs is a key element of the President’s middle-class economics agenda. 

TechHire is a multi-sector effort and call to action for local communities to collaborate in helping employers fill critical local IT job gaps by empowering a diverse array of Americans to rapidly gain the necessary technology skills, including using nontraditional training options like “coding bootcamps” and high-quality online courses. 

The TechHire initiative is kicking off with a broad range of partners already on board:

• 21 forward-leaning communities and over 300 employer partners. 21 regions, with over 120,000 open technology jobs and more than 300 employer partners, are announcing plans to work together on new ways to recruit and place applicants into jobs based on their actual skills and to create more rapid IT training opportunities. Get your community or employer involved by learning more here.

• New tools, resources, and commitments to support TechHire communities. Private sector leaders are announcing new tools and resources to encourage and expand continued innovation in technology training, with a focus on reaching under-served populations. For example, Capital One, through its FutureEdge initiative, $150 million FutureEdge initiative to help increase tech skills and hiring, while providing support tailored to the needs of local communities. LinkedIn will provide free data about the supply and demand of IT skills to help communities focus their efforts on in-demand jobs. To ensure high quality, A group of coding bootcamps have begun collaborating on how to transparently report completion and employment outcomes and they published an initial plan in a letter to the President today. A complete list of private sector commitments can be found here.

• $100 million in new Federal investments. The Administration will launch a $100 million H-1B grant competition by the Department of Labor to support innovative approaches to training and successfully employing individuals who face barriers to training and employment, including those with child care responsibilities, people with disabilities, disconnected youth, and limited English proficient workers, among others. This grant competition will support the growth of evidence-based strategies such as accelerated learning, work-based learning, and Registered Apprenticeships.

These new efforts will build on the Administration’s broader agenda to invest in training for in-demand industries, including recent announcements by the Department of Labor on increased support for apprenticeships and by the Veterans Administration on accelerated learning.

And the President's visit to Georgia Tech today builds on the key themes he outlined yesterday with the launch of his Tech Hire initiative. We need to keep adapting our training options as new innovative models emerge which can reduce training time, costs, accessibility. The online Computer Science degree at Georgia Tech is a great example: it’s reducing cost and has the potential to do so without reducing quality.

Yesterday was just the beginning for TechHire. As the President highlighted at the National League of Cities, TechHire’s success will require many more to step up: Mayors and local leaders, employers and tech innovators, philanthropists and non-profits, workforce leaders and training providers, and everyone committed to unlocking the hidden talent in our communities. 

The President ended his remarks with the remarkable story of LaShana Lewis. LaShana grew up in East St. Louis with a passion for computers.  But without a college degree, she couldn’t even get an interview for a tech job. So she spent 12 years as a bus driver and in entry-level jobs.  But with help of entrepreneurial new training organizations like LaunchCode which helped give her skills and vouched for her, she’s now an Associate System Engineer at MasterCard, and MasterCard wants more people like her to join their team. 

LaShana’s story can be the story of so many others, and working together, we can ensure that it will be. We encourage everyone to reach out and discover your local tech community, whether through coding bootcamps, tech meetups, hack-a-thon gatherings, campus tech or entrepreneurship clubs and more. We hope you will take the time to learn more about TechHire at WhiteHouse.gov/TechHire and bring it to your community.

There are good answers.

The purpose of investment provisions in our trade agreements is to provide American individuals and businesses who do business abroad with the same protections we provide to domestic and foreign investors alike in the United States.  

ISDS is an arbitration procedure – similar to procedures used every day by businesses, governments, and private citizens across the globe – that allows for an impartial, law-based approach to resolve conflicts and has been important to encouraging development, rule of law, and good governance around the world. ISDS does not undermine U.S. sovereignty, change U.S. law, nor grant any new substantive rights to multinational companies.  

The reality is that ISDS does not and cannot require countries to change any law or regulation. 

ISDS has come under criticism because of some legitimate complaints about poorly written agreements. The U.S. shares some of those concerns, and agrees with the need for new, higher standards, stronger safeguards and better transparency provisions. Through TPP and other agreements, that is exactly what we are putting in place.

It is an often repeated, but inaccurate, claim that ISDS gives companies the right to weaken labor or environmental standards, for example, suggesting that a trade agreement could result in the United States having to lower its minimum wage.

The reality is that ISDS does not and cannot require countries to change any law or regulation. Looking more broadly, TPP will result in higher levels of labor and environmental protections in most TPP countries than they have today. If TPP is passed by Congress, it will also create strong, enforceable new labor protections that would allow the United States to take action – on its own, or on the basis of a petition from labor unions or other interested parties – against TPP governments that don't honor their labor commitments. The same is true for enforcing environmental commitments.  

Similarly, the investment provisions under TPP are designed to protect American investors abroad from discrimination and denial of justice.

Under our Constitution, the Government has wide powers to regulate on behalf of the public interest even if that impacts private property. But when government takes its citizen’s property from them – be it a person's home or their business – the government is required to provide compensation. This is a core principle reflected in the U.S. Constitution and recognized under international law and the legal systems of many countries.

Unfortunately, foreign courts have not always respected this principle, and U.S. investors often face a heightened risk of bias or discrimination when abroad. That’s why governments have looked to international arbitration to resolve such disputes for centuries. Earlier in our history, the United States used gunboat diplomacy, sending our military to defend our economic interests abroad. The decision was made by our predecessors that it was better to rely on neutral arbitration instead.

Over the last 50 years, 180 countries have entered into more than 3,000 agreements that provide investment protections, the vast majority of which have some form of neutral arbitration. European countries are party to more than 1400 of those agreements. The U.S. is party to about 50.

Those thousands of agreements contain a wide range of standards, some that strongly protect a government’s right to regulate, others that do not. The U.S. has been at the leading edge of updating, upgrading and clarifying these standards; protecting the right to regulate; and drawing lessons from previous agreements to ensure that our agreements have the highest possible standards. TPP incorporates and builds on those efforts and goes beyond them by:

• Further raising the standards: TPP will make it absolutely clear that governments can regulate in the public interest, including with regard to health, safety and the environment, and narrowing the definition of what kinds of injuries investors can seek compensation for.
• Adding safeguards: TPP will include the ability to dismiss frivolous claims quickly and award fees against the claimant to deter such suits; making it possible for governments to provide binding direction to the arbitrators; and creating additional filters for cases having to do with financial services.
• Closing loopholes: For example, TPP will prevent sham corporations from accessing the investment protections provided by the agreement.
• Creating transparency: All arbitration proceedings under TPP will be open and non-parties, including labor unions and civil society organizations, will be able to file briefs to inform the outcome of cases.

There have only been 13 cases brought to judgment against the United States in the three decades since we’ve been party to these agreements. By contrast, during the same period of time in our domestic system, individual and companies have brought hundreds of thousands of challenges against Federal, state, and local governments in U.S. courts under U.S. law.

We have never lost an ISDS case because of the strong safeguards in the U.S. approach.

And because we have continued to raise standards through each agreement, in recent years we have seen a drop in ISDS claims, despite increased levels of investment.

Through TPP, we can set a new, higher set of standards, stronger safeguards and better transparency provisions.

The truth is that it is difficult for a claimant to win under our agreements and, if they have a legitimate claim, they tend to bring it under our domestic court system.

Senator Warren alludes to a number of specific cases, most of which are not under U.S. agreements and based on different standards, but each one of which is instructive:

• In the only U.S. case alluded to in Senator Warren’s op-ed, a regulation was adopted banning a chemical used in gasoline additives made only by a Canadian company. An arbitration panel found in favor of the government and underscored the right of governments to regulate for public purposes, including regulation that imposes burdens on foreign investors, and noted that investors cannot expect that environmental or health regulations will not change.
• The French-Egyptian case is instructive for two reasons.  First, we don't know much about it because the facts and briefs are not public. Our proposal creates transparency to address that issue.  Second, the information currently available on the case suggests it is not based on the fact that there was an increase in the minimum wage, but rather on a claim that the government has not honored its contract to pay a fixed percentage of the operating costs.
• The Swedish suit against Germany is also instructive. Here, too, details on the case are not public, unlike cases under U.S. agreements. But available information suggests that the case is not about whether Germany can change its national energy policy to do away with nuclear power, but whether Germany needs to provide compensation for abrogating its existing commitments. German domestic courts have upheld claims relating to these issues in cases filed by Germany's domestic energy companies under German law. This case is also instructive because the Swedish company is pursuing claims both in German domestic courts and through neutral arbitration. Our reforms would prevent this kind of forum shopping.
• In the case of the Dutch bank’s lawsuit against the Czech government, the investment agreement at hand had a different standard than what we are proposing in TPP. Our approach is more demanding and, among other things, would affirm the right of governments to take prudential measures to protect the financial system.

Senator Warren also questions the integrity of the arbitrators who decide cases, suggesting that they are biased against governments. In fact, ISDS panels more frequently side with respondent governments. The U.S. government, for example, has won every single case concluded against it.

The arbitration rules used under TPP require the independence of arbitrators and provide for challenge and disqualification in the event of conflict of interest or bias. They also provide a central role for the government being sued to determine which arbitrators hear the case.

We share a number of the theoretical concerns Senator Warren raises. But we disagree with her suggestion that we leave it to the free market to put in place basic rule of law and protections. That hasn't worked in the past and government has a role to play.  

We can’t change the standards in the more than 3,000 agreements among other countries. Most of those agreements will continue to exist, with or without TPP. But through TPP, we can set a new, higher set of standards, stronger safeguards and better transparency provisions.

That's exactly what we're doing.

Learn more about ISDS and it's role in our trade agreements here. 

The President’s Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) has also released an updated report on the economic impact of the President’s executive actions, which are now estimated to boost the nation’s GDP by as much as $250 billion over ten years, due in part to increases in the size of the American workforce and to increased innovation from high-skill workers. These actions will also increase the productivity and wages of all American workers, not just immigrants, as evidenced by a large body of academic work cited in the CEA report.

By finalizing this rule, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is taking an important step forward in executing the President’s immigration executive actions and locking in these economic benefits. The changes included in this rule will—for the first time—allow employment authorization for the spouses of certain high-skill workers who are here on H-1B visas, as long as those workers have begun the process of applying for a green card. This rule change, which was recommended in a “We the People” petition to the White House, will empower these spouses to put their own education and skills to work for the country that they and their families now call home.

DHS estimates that in the first year, there may be nearly 180,000 spouses eligible to apply for employment authorization under this rule, with as many as 55,000 eligible annually in following years. These women and men are Americans-in-waiting, whose families are often stuck for years in lengthy green card backlogs as a result of our broken immigration system. Allowing them to put their skills to use will reduce the strain on their families during that waiting time, and will yield significant benefits for our economy as well.

It’s no secret that immigrants make outsized contributions to American entrepreneurship, innovation, and economic growth. Immigrants have started up one of every four small businesses and high-tech companies across the country, and represent 26 percent of all U.S.-based Nobel laureates over the past 50 years. That’s why in the months ahead, the President’s executive actions will do even more to improve the immigration system for high-skilled workers, graduates, and entrepreneurs, such as:

• Unlocking the talents of more highly-skilled Americans-in-waiting by providing a portable employment authorization for those workers stuck in the green card backlog, allowing them to accept promotions, change positions or employers, or start new companies.
• Expanding immigration options for foreign entrepreneurs who meet certain criteria for creating jobs, attracting investment, and generating revenue in the U.S., to ensure that our system encourages the world’s most promising and talented entrepreneurs to innovate and hire here in America.
• Strengthening and extending on-the-job training for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) graduates from U.S. universities, so we welcome the best and brightest rather than sending them home to compete against us.

Of course, only Congress can finish the job of fixing our broken immigration system. President Obama will continue to work with Congress to pass a comprehensive, bipartisan bill that will capture the full economic benefits of immigration reform.

Shaun Donovan is Director of the Office of Management and Budget. Jeffrey Zients is Director of the National Economic Council and Assistant to the President for Economic Policy.

Learn more:

• Press Release: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) on work authorization for spouses of certain H-1B visa holders
• Fact Sheet: The President’s Immigration Accountability Executive Actions
• Report: The Economic Effects of Administrative Action on Immigration

President Barack Obama shakes hands with people in the crowd following his remarks on immigration reform at Chamizal National Memorial Park in El Paso, Texas. May 10, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Last month, President Obama took action to fix our broken immigration system, including commonsense steps that will help secure the border, bring undocumented immigrants out of the shadows, and make it easier for high-skilled immigrants and entrepreneurs to contribute to our economy.

Congress needs to pass comprehensive immigration reform to fully upgrade our immigration system, and the President has been clear he will continue to pursue bipartisan legislation to do that. But in the meantime, the President also issued a new directive for his Administration to continue to seek out ways to modernize and streamline our immigration system within existing authorities. This Presidential Memorandum directs the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Homeland Security to lead an effort across government, in consultation with stakeholders, to identify new actions that would:

• Streamline and improve the legal immigration system -- including visa processing -- with a focus on reforms that reduce government costs, improve services for applicants, reduce burdens on employers, and combat waste, fraud, and abuse in the system.
• Ensure that the government issues all of the immigrant visas that Congress provides for every year, consistent with demand.
• Modernize the information technology infrastructure underlying the visa processing system, with a goal of reducing redundant systems, improving the experience of applicants, and enabling better public and congressional oversight.

These recommendations are due back to the President on March 22, and public input is essential. That’s why the Department of State and the Department of Homeland Security recently released a Request for Information in the Federal Register, to give the public an opportunity to inform the Administration’s next steps in modernizing our immigration system. Our goal is to ensure that we have thorough input from all stakeholders: employers, visa applicants, policy advocates, and the public at large.

We want to hear from you. What are the most important policy and operational changes that would improve the processing of visas at our embassies and consulates abroad, the processing of visa-related paperwork here in the United States, and the experience of visa-holders arriving at our ports of entry? What new actions would bolster protections for workers? What are the most effective ways to improve the system for immigration pathways based on family relationships, employment, humanitarian relief, and investment?

Please visit the full Request for Information to see the complete list of questions, along with instructions on how to submit your comments and recommendations by January 29, 2015. You may respond to any or all of the focused questions, or simply submit your general comments.

America needs a 21st century immigration system that supports a growing economy, and that lives up to our heritage as a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants. Acting within his legal authority, the President is taking important steps to fix our immigration system as much as he can, and we look forward to your recommendations for what improvements would make the biggest difference. 

As the President acts, he’ll continue to work with Congress on a bipartisan bill -- like the one passed by the Senate more than a year ago -- that will provide a more comprehensive solution to fix our broken immigration system. In the meantime, we can continue to make significant improvements by following through on the President’s actions, so I hope you will take this opportunity to weigh in with your recommendations.

Learn more:

• Fact Sheet: The President’s Immigration Accountability Executive Actions
• Fact Sheet: The Economic Benefits of Fixing Our Broken Immigration System
• Blog Post: Taking Action to Attract High-Skilled Immigrants, Graduates, and Entrepreneurs
• Blog Post: Entrepreneurs Wanted: The President’s Actions on Immigration
• Report: The Economic Effects of Administrative Action on Immigration
• Memo from the Secretary of Homeland Security on Policies Supporting U.S. High-Skilled Businesses and Workers
• Fact Sheet: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Executive Actions on Immigration
• Fact Sheet: Department of Labor to Pursue Modernized Recruitment and Application Requirements for the PERM Program

Recently, questions have arisen over how we will protect the progress toward a safer financial system that we have made since the crisis in the context of these trade negotiations. President Obama inherited a financial crisis that was the consequence of years of poor financial regulation, and he made Wall Street reform a top priority as he worked with Congress to craft a set of historic protections that ultimately became the Dodd-Frank Act. Since he signed that legislation in 2010, his Administration has made significant progress implementing its key provisions. Just as important, the President has pushed for stronger rules across the globe through the G-20 and other venues, and he has also fought against repeated attempts to undermine Wall Street reform here at home. He will do whatever it takes to make our financial system stronger and more stable.

As for TPP, there is nothing in the proposed agreement that would have inhibited our decisive response to the recent financial crisis or that would dilute the important financial reforms we have implemented over the past four years. There is also nothing that would prevent us from taking similar steps in the future. The President will not allow this agreement to undermine essential financial reforms.

On the contrary, this agreement will raise standards and level the playing field for American companies to compete abroad, including for services suppliers, the largest sector of our economy. TPP will also provide investor protections to benefit the 23 million Americans who work for U.S. firms doing business overseas. 

Finally, it is important to note that TPP protects the right of governments to regulate in the public interest. The United States wouldn’t negotiate away its right to regulate in the public interest – with regard to public health and safety, the financial sector, the environment, or any other area.

According to an analysis by the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, the President’s executive actions on immigration stand to boost the nation’s GDP by $90 billion to $210 billion, while shrinking the Federal deficit by $25 billion over the next ten years. These actions will also increase the productivity and wages of all American workers, not just immigrants.

Many of these economic benefits spring from the President’s actions to “make it easier and faster for high-skilled immigrants, graduates, and entrepreneurs to stay and contribute to our economy.” We need to build on our strengths -- after all, over one-quarter of all U.S.-based Nobel laureates over the past 50 years were foreign-born, and more than 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or children of immigrants.

But for too long, our broken immigration system has made it needlessly difficult for America to attract the best and brightest talent from around the world. Highly skilled workers often have to wait years, even decades, to obtain the green cards that will allow them to fully contribute to our economy and become Americans over time. Entrepreneurs have no dedicated immigration pathway that allows them to grow their companies and create jobs here. And every year, we educate some of the world’s most talented students at our universities, only to compel them to go back to their home countries to compete against us.

Here are the key things that the President’s executive actions will do to improve the immigration system for high-skilled workers, graduates, and entrepreneurs:

Unlocking the talents of highly skilled Americans-in-waiting: Most high-skilled immigrants get started on a temporary work visa (typically the H-1B visa), and if there are no American workers qualified and available to do the job, the employer can sponsor that worker for lawful permanent residence—commonly called a “green card.” But the wait for that green card can last years, even decades, even after their application is approved. During this time the worker is effectively locked into one position at the sponsoring company. The President’s actions will make it possible for these highly skilled workers and certain spouses to obtain a portable work authorization, allowing them to accept promotions, change positions or employers, or start new companies while they and their families wait to receive their green cards, and ultimately become Americans.

Clearing the path for job-creating entrepreneurs: The President’s actions will, for the first time, clarify dedicated immigration pathways for entrepreneurs who seek to start and grow their companies here. Entrepreneurs who meet certain criteria for creating jobs, attracting investment, and generating revenue within the United States will be eligible for temporary status or a green card. More than ever before, these “startup visa” pathways will allow the world’s most promising and innovative entrepreneurs to innovate and hire here in America.

Retaining the scientists and engineers we educate here. Our universities train some of the world’s most talented students in science, technology engineering, and mathematics (STEM), but our broken immigration system compels many of them to take their skills back to their home countries. The President’s actions will strengthen and extend on-the-job training for STEM graduates from U.S. universities, giving them a limited but more reasonable period of time to fully realize their course of study.

The President has also issued a new directive to make sure that his Administration is leaving no stone unturned when it comes to modernizing our system of managing and issuing visas more effectively in order to improve the employment-based immigration system, as well as other pieces of our immigration system.

These are commonsense steps, but only Congress can finish the job. As the President acts, he’ll continue to work with Congress on a comprehensive, bipartisan bill—like the one passed by the Senate more than a year ago—that can replace these actions and fix the whole system.

Learn more:

• Fact Sheet: The President’s Immigration Accountability Executive Actions
• Fact Sheet: The Economic Benefits of Fixing Our Broken Immigration System
• Memo from the Secretary of Homeland Security on Policies Supporting U.S. High-Skilled Businesses and Workers (PDF)
• Fact Sheet: Department of Labor to Pursue Modernized Recruitment and Application Requirements for the PERM Program

The Obama administration launched the Investing in Manufacturing Communities Partnership initiative in 2013 to build on the momentum in manufacturing we have seen over the last several years. Since February 2010, the manufacturing sector has created over 700,000 jobs and has grown nearly twice as fast as the overall economy. And with weekly hours in manufacturing at their highest since World War II, the sector appears poised for more jobs and growth, helping make the United States more competitive today than it has been in decades.

The Investing in Manufacturing Communities Partnership is an initiative that aims to spur communities to develop integrated, long-term economic development strategies that sharpen their competitive edge in attracting global manufacturers and their supply chains to our local communities -- increasing investment and creating jobs. Specifically, the program brings together the resources of multiple federal departments and agencies to support strong local economic development plans.

At the first-ever Summit, the 12 communities designated "manufacturing communities" under the first Investing in Manufacturing Communities Partnership national competition shared best practices and an update on the hard work underway in their communities to strengthen manufacturing with other communities looking to grow their own manufacturing sectors. 

Building on the strength of their local economic development strategies in manufacturing, the 12 communities are attracting new public and private investments in their communities, including over $100 million in new federal economic development investments. For instance, Southern California's designation as a manufacturing community helped Chaffey College secure a $15 million grant from the U.S. Departments of Labor and Education to create an advanced manufacturing training center, which will train workers for the highly technical, highly skilled jobs needed to grow the industry and the economy of the region. The Puget Sound Regional Council, as part of an effort led by the state of Washington, was awarded a $4.3 million grant from the Department of Defense to transition Washington state's defense-sector advanced manufacturing capabilities over to new applications.

Wichita State University in Kansas received a grant from the Commerce Department's Economic Development Administration to purchase laboratory equipment to explore new techniques for advanced manufacturing that could have untold implications for innovation down the road. And the Department of Transportation has made infrastructure investments aimed at spurring local economic development and access to jobs in Investing in Manufacturing Communities Partnership communities across the country -- including $20 million to upgrade and expand the Port of Seattle.

We are launching the second round of the Investing in Manufacturing Communities Partnership competition to build on these successes and replicate them in 12 more communities across the country. Designated communities will receive a dedicated federal point of contact and additional consideration for over $1.3 billion in aligned federal economic development funding.

Information on how to apply will be posted at EDA.gov in the coming weeks.

We heard from several applicants in the last round that the process of applying itself spurred partners from across their communities to come together to develop a shared vision and strategy for growth was helpful, despite not receiving a designation. We hope that those communities will reapply and be joined by others.

The success of Investing in Manufacturing Communities Partnership is measured not by the number of designations, but by the number of communities inspired to create effective partnerships, manage their supply chain, and build a skilled workforce in order to grow their region's economy. The country's economy is built on a foundation of local successes -- and it is through the strengths of local communities that we will compete for and win future growth in manufacturing.