Small business, defense, energy: All stories from 2011 budget
Let the haggling begin.
Photo by Flickr user Mollypop
The White House unveiled President Obama’s proposed budget for the 2011 fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, and the outline contains plenty of launching points for biz stories.
The $3.8 trillion (that’s 12 zeros) spending plan, which still must be hammered out with Congress, is jobs-focused and thus includes quite a few direct and indirect business and personal finance incentives.
At first glance, these story opportunities leap out:
Clean energy. The budget calls for $6 billion in related spending, mostly research and development. Time to double-check with related industries in your region. Battery developers? Wind power? Solar? Ethanol? Hydro power? Tap resources at university business incubators and professional groups as well as special R&D units at existing utilities and manufacturers.
The U.S. Department of Energy and its renewable energy lab is another good starting point.
Infrastructure. Translation: roads and bridges. Check with your state’s transportation department about projects under bid and how they plan to glom on to a share of the $4 billion at stake; a records check also will direct you to the major general contractors in your region. Aside from the “your tax dollars” aspect, these companies may be ripe for interesting new technology stories or even career packages.
Defense. A couple hundred billion including $33 billion to supplement 2010 spending. You might be surprised at the pockets of defense contracting in your region; again, your state commerce department may point you in the right direction, or do a sort at the federal procurement database.
Small business. Small and medium employers will doubtless by the focal point of many jobs creations programs; most of them accomplished by tax credits including $33 billion in tax relief under the proposed Small Business Jobs and Wages tax cut announced last week. Among other things it would provide $5,000 in incentives for every net new employee on payroll and help small operators with Social Security and Medicare taxes when they boost their workers’ paid hours. Capital gains taxes also could be reduced, spurring investment by small firms.
Personal finance. Larger child tax credits, an extension to the Making Work Pay credit for lower-income earners and $17 billion in extra Pell Grant funding are among direct forms of aid proposed to help middle-class pocketbooks.
If it’s been a while since your last civics class, here’s a Wikipedia backgrounder on the budget approval process; note the external links to watchdog groups and academics which may be helpful sources to you.
The full report is available at the Office of Management and Budget site.
Click on “The Budget” menu item for a table of contents by agency; this would be handy if your territory has a significant interaction with, say, the Department of Defense or agriculture subsidies or other fed programs.
Here’s a link to a state-by-state interactive map from the OMB.
Clicking on your state’s icon pulls up a narrative about regional economic issues and a couple of sub-sections highlighting state-specific budget provisions (though some of them look pretty boilerplate to me, so be careful.)
