President Considers Tax Credit to Hire Veterans

WASHINGTON, July 7, 2011 — A tax cred­it for com­pa­nies that hire mil­i­tary vet­er­ans could be the next step in help­ing the acute­ly under­em­ployed group, Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma sug­gest­ed yes­ter­day in his Twit­ter town hall meet­ing.
The pres­i­dent addressed many eco­nom­ic issues sur­round­ing his theme of how to reduce the fed­er­al deficit, and was asked about jobs for vet­er­ans while field­ing ques­tions sub­mit­ted on Twit­ter.

A Twit­ter user asked the pres­i­dent, “Can you give com­pa­nies a tax break if they hire an hon­or­ably dis­charged vet­er­an?” That, Oba­ma said, is a sub­ject he’s dis­cussing with his staff. 

“We’ve got all these young peo­ple com­ing back from Iraq and Afghanistan [who] have made incred­i­ble sac­ri­fices [and] have tak­en on incred­i­ble respon­si­bil­i­ties,” the pres­i­dent said. 

You see some 23-year-old who’s lead­ing a pla­toon in huge­ly dan­ger­ous cir­cum­stances, mak­ing decisions[and]operating com­plex tech­nolo­gies. These are folks who can per­form. But unfor­tu­nate­ly, what we’re see­ing is a lot of these young vet­er­ans have a high­er unem­ploy­ment rate than peo­ple who did­n’t serve. And that makes no sense.” 

The pres­i­dent said one idea under dis­cus­sion is to com­bine a tax cred­it for com­pa­nies that hire vet­er­ans with a cam­paign to get pri­vate com­pa­nies to “do the right thing” and hire addi­tion­al veterans. 

An out­reach pro­gram to hire vet­er­ans already exists in the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, the pres­i­dent noted. 

“We’ve [put] huge empha­sis on ramp­ing up our out­reach to vet­er­ans and hir­ing vet­er­ans,” Oba­ma said, “and this has been a top pri­or­i­ty of mine. 

“The notion that these guys who are sac­ri­fic­ing for our free­dom and our secu­ri­ty end up com­ing home and not being able to find a job, I think, is unac­cept­able,” he added. 

Source:
U.S. Depart­ment of Defense
Office of the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Defense (Pub­lic Affairs) 

Face­book and/or on Twit­ter

Team GlobDef

Seit 2001 ist GlobalDefence.net im Internet unterwegs, um mit eigenen Analysen, interessanten Kooperationen und umfassenden Informationen für einen spannenden Überblick der Weltlage zu sorgen. GlobalDefence.net war dabei die erste deutschsprachige Internetseite, die mit dem Schwerpunkt Sicherheitspolitik außerhalb von Hochschulen oder Instituten aufgetreten ist.

Alle Beiträge ansehen von Team GlobDef →