The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is a nationwide effort to create jobs, jumpstart growth and transform our economy for the 21st century. Across the country, this package will help businesses create jobs and families afford their bills while laying a foundation for future economic growth in key areas like health care, clean energy, education and a 21st century infrastructure. In South Carolina, this package will deliver immediate, tangible impacts, including:

• Creating or saving 50,000 jobs over the next two years. Jobs created will be in a range of industries from clean energy to health care, with over 90% in the private sector. [Source: White House Estimate based on Romer and Bernstein, “The Job Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan.” January 9, 2009.]
  
  
• Providing a making work pay tax cut of up to $800 for 1,790,000 workers and their families. The plan will make a down payment on the President’s Making Work Pay tax cut for 95% of workers and their families, designed to pay out immediately into workers’ paychecks. [Source: White House Estimate based on IRS Statistics of Income]
  
  
• Making 58,000 families eligible for a new American Opportunity Tax Credit to make college affordable. By creating a new $2,500 partially refundable tax credit for four years of college, this plan will give 3.8 million families nationwide – and 58,000 families in South Carolina – new assistance to put college within their reach. [Source: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities analysis of U.S. Census data]
  
  
• Offering an additional $100 per month in unemployment insurance benefits to 294,000 workers in South Carolina who have lost their jobs in this recession, and providing extended unemployment benefits to an additional 51,000 laid-off workers. [Source: National Employment Law Project]   
  
  
• Providing funding sufficient to modernize at least 150 schools in South Carolina so our children have the labs, classrooms and libraries they need to compete in the 21st century economy. [Source: White House Estimate]

In addition to this immediate assistance for South Carolina, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will help transform our economy by:

• Doubling renewable energy generating capacity over three years, creating enough renewable energy to power 6 million American homes.
  
  
• Computerizing every American’s health record in five years, reducing medical errors and saving billions of dollars in health care costs.
  
  
• Enact the most significant expansion in tax cuts for low- and moderate-income households ever:
  
  
• Enacting the largest investment increase in our nation’s roads, bridges and mass transit systems since the creation of the national highway system in the 1950s.