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Senate mulls aid for vets, businesses
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Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, right, chats with Jonathan Tisch, chairman and CEO of Loews, during a meeting for CEOs and others hosted by the Goldman Sachs Foundation in New York on Monday. Ahead of Veterans Day, the Senate voted to start debate on tax credits for businesses to hire unemployed veterans or injured veterans who have been out of work.
Associated Press
WASHINGTON
The Senate voted overwhelmingly Monday to temporarily set aside its partisan standoff over President Barack Obama’s jobs plan and move toward giving a modest economic spark to two potent interest groups: veterans and businesses.
In a 94-1 roll call, senators voted to start debating a measure repealing a requirement that federal, state and many local governments withhold 3 percent of their payments to contractors. That bill has been lobbied by a wide swath of industry groups large and small and has no significant opposition.
By the time the Senate approves the legislation — perhaps later this week — Democrats planned to add language backed by both parties offering tax breaks to companies that hire veterans and providing vets with employment counseling and other job-hunting services.
Monday’s one-sided vote signaled that barring an unexpected twist, the Senate was likely to send the overall measure to the House, which returns from a recess next week.
The tax credits, up to $9,600 for companies hiring disabled veterans who have been jobless at least six months, would represent the first — though tiny — piece of Obama’s $447 billion jobs proposal to be approved by Congress, assuming Senate and then House passage.
The expected cooperation contrasted with the two parties’ battling at a time when persistent 9 percent unemployment is keeping 14 million Americans out of work and looming as the dominant issue in the 2012 presidential and congressional elections. It also masked the divisions between Democrats and Republicans over the keystones of Obama’s jobs plan: spending huge sums to repair roads, hire teachers and give workers and companies breaks on the payroll tax.