On Cue: Administration Announces Massive Energy Tax Credits Program

Both from a literal and public-confidence standpoint, the administration has used stimulus announcements to combat a bad economy this year: the economy lags, new data comes out to show it, and the administration announces a new program to help fix it, combating both the job losses and the image--doing something about it, and showing that they're doing something about it.

So, after the December unemployment figures were released Friday morning by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, President Obama took to the podium in the White House's East Room to announce $2.3 billion in clean energy manufacturing tax credits being given out on a competitive bases by the Department of Energy, which is now done sorting through the bids and approving them, along with the IRS.


"The initiative we're outlining today will likely generate 17,000 jobs, and the roughly $5 billion more that we'll leverage in the private sector investments could help create tens of thousands of additional jobs," Obama said.

Clean energy manufacturing was a big selling point of the stimulus to begin with, and today's announcement is part of what was promised as the stimulus made its way through Congress around this time last year: the idea of "green jobs" that would simultaneously put Americans to work and push the nation toward cleaner energy. With the bidding process now complete for this $2.3 billion of credits, the Department of Energy has moved the administration forward on that point of stimulus agenda.