佛蒙特州副州長代表州政府悼慰臺南震災

波士頓經文處處長賴銘琪（左）拜會佛蒙特州副州長史考特。

美國新英格蘭地區佛蒙特州副州長史考特（Phil Scott）2月23日代表該州政府，為本月6日發生在臺灣南部的強烈地震所造成之嚴重傷亡，向前往拜會的駐波士頓臺北經濟文化辦事處處長賴銘琪表示哀悼與慰問。此外，該州眾議會議長史密斯（Shap Smith）及參議會代議長肯柏(John Campbell)等政要也同表悼慰。

賴銘琪於23日及24日偕朱永昌組長赴佛蒙特州首府蒙特彼利爾（Montpelier）訪問時，向他們說明該震災共計造成117人死亡、數百人受傷及其他財產損失；並對此次地震發生後，美國政府及各界捐款賑災及積極提供協助，表達我政府及人民由衷的感謝。

賴銘琪此行旨在強化雙方友好關係，並應邀至眾議會商業暨經濟發展委員會演講，向他們簡介臺灣近期的政經發展。賴銘琪向佛蒙特州政要表示，臺灣於元月完成總統及立委選舉，民進黨主席蔡英文當選，為我國第一位女性總統，也是亞洲國家第一位無政治家世而當選國家領導人之女性，再次印證民主制度確可在華人社會施行。

佛蒙特州為臺灣的姐妹州，雙方關係十分友好，該州眾議會23日並再度通過重申與中華民國友好關係及支持臺灣參與國際組織之決議案。臺灣則是佛蒙特州第九大出口市場，雙邊經貿關係穩定成長。此外，臺灣也與佛蒙特州發展教育合作交流，鼓勵雙方中、高等教育機構師生交流與互訪。

賴銘琪此行除拜會佛蒙特州副州長、眾議長及參議會代議長外，也拜會佛蒙特州民主黨主席Dottie Deans、執行長Conor Casey、刻正爭取民主黨總統候選人資格之聯邦參議員桑德斯（Bernard Sanders）的選區代表Katarina Lisaius、Kathryn Van Haste及多位當地政要。

Seven Years Ago, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Helped Bring Our Economy Back from the Brink of a Second Great Depression

FACT SHEET: Seven Years Ago, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

Helped Bring Our Economy Back from the Brink of a Second Great Depression

This month marks  the seven-year anniversary of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Recovery Act). The President signed the Recovery Act into law on February 17, 2009—less than a month after taking office—as our economy teetered on the brink of a second Great Depression. In fact, by a number of measures, the economy was collapsing as fast or faster in late 2008 and early 2009 than it was when the Depression began. But the Recovery Act and the Federal government’s broader response to the crisis helped ensure that the U.S. economy not only climbed out of the crisis but emerged stronger than before—an historic turnaround in part attributable to what the Recovery Act did to restart near-term growth and build a new foundation for long-term economic strength.

By the beginning of 2016, the U.S. economy had completed the best two years of job growth since the 1990s and the fastest two-year drop in the unemployment rate in three decades. Each month we continue to extend the longest streak of job growth on record, with 14 million private-sector jobs created over 71 straight months of job growth. Moreover, wage growth has strengthened to its fastest pace since the financial crisis over the last six months. Seven years after the Recovery Act was passed, it is important to look back at the bold actions the President and many other policymakers took to support our economy.

By many measures, economic conditions at the outset of the financial crisis were collapsing faster than the onset of the Great Depression.

·         U.S. households’ net worth declined by even more in the first year of the recent recession than during the Depression, as the crisis in 2008 erased $13 trillion of wealth from the U.S. economy—more than five times the rate of loss seen at the onset of the Depression.

·         Similarly, the U.S. stock market declined by nearly 50 percent from its pre-crisis peak by the time the President took office, outpacing the market crash over the same period during the Great Depression.

·         The rapid collapse of home prices, employment, and output in 2008 also matched or exceeded those in the first year of the Depression.

But the different policy choices we made led to very different outcomes. The economy began to rebound in 2009, returning us to a path of robust and sustained growth.

·         After the unemployment rate peaked at 10 percent in 2009, we have since cut it in half, with the rate dropping below 5 percent in January—the fastest pace of decline in thirty years and nearly the fastest since World War II.

·         Economic output per person recovered to pre-crisis levels just four years after the height of the crisis. By contrast, the recovery following the height of the Great Depression took 11 years.

·         The United States was one of the first advanced economies in the world to emerge from the crisis and recover its pre-crisis economic output.

Leading outside analysts agree that the Recovery Act created millions of jobs and substantially boosted economic output, supporting the economy at a crucial moment.

·         Recent analysis by Moody’s Analytics’ Mark Zandi and Princeton’s Alan Blinder found that the Recovery Act raised U.S. GDP by over 3 percent—or roughly $500 billion—in 2010 alone, lowering the unemployment rate by 1.4 percentage points that year. From 2009 to 2014, this raised employment by almost 6 million job-years (years of full-time equivalent employment).

·         A broad range of other private-sector analysts, including Macroeconomic Advisers, have concluded that the Recovery Act increased U.S. GDP by between 2 and 3.4 percent in 2010 alone.

·         The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), similarly, has estimated that the Recovery Act raised U.S. GDP by between roughly 1 to 4 percent in 2010 alone. CBO’s analysis indicates that the Recovery Act lowered the unemployment rate that year by as much as 1.8 percentage points.

Analysis by the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) suggests that the Recovery Act created or supported millions of jobs, provided a substantial boost to economic growth, and delivered a significant “bang-for-the-buck” for every dollar spent.

·         Consistent with outside estimates, CEA estimates the boost to the economy from the Recovery Act generated almost 6 million job-years (years of full-time equivalent employment) through the end of 2013, raising employment by more than 2.3 million in 2010 alone.

·         CEA estimates that GDP was 2.4 percent higher in 2010 than it would have been in the absence of the Recovery Act.

·         Each dollar of the Recovery Act increased total economic output cumulatively by more than $1.30 between 2009 and 2013, reflecting ripple effects as the recovery measures passed through to—and helped stabilize—the broader economy.

·         Based solely on market incomes, the poverty rate would have risen 4.5 percentage points from 2007 to 2010. However, after taking into account federal programs like the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Child Tax Credit, and nutrition assistance, the poverty rate rose just 0.5 percentage points. Without the Recovery Act’s boost to household incomes, the poverty rate in 2010 would have risen an additional 1.7 percentage points—which translates into about 5.3 million additional people that would have slipped into poverty.

While shoring up our economy in the short run, the Recovery Act also took significant steps critical to supporting long-term growth.

·         These policies included major investments and tax incentives to support clean energy, education reforms catalyzed by the Race to the Top program, innovative infrastructure projects funded through TIGER grants, expansions to Pell Grants and the creation of the American Opportunity Tax Credit to make college more affordable, investments in electronic medical records to improve health care, and tax relief to boost incomes for working and middle-class families.

·         These investments in the Recovery Act will support our economy for decades to come by raising productivity growth, and many of the programs created by and policy changes adopted through the Recovery Act have been extended, enhanced, or made permanent since.

Furthermore, this historic recovery was achieved as part of a comprehensive response that cut the deficit in the medium and long run and offered an unprecedented degree of transparency.

·         In the years following passage of the Recovery Act, the Administration paired additional near-term support for the economy with medium- and long-term deficit reduction. These measures alongside stronger growth—in part driven by the Recovery Act—helped drive annual budget deficits down by nearly three-fourths, with the fastest pace of deficit reduction since the period following World War II.

·         Even in isolation, the Recovery Act had at most a minimal impact on the long-run debt, adding less than 0.1 percentage points to the 75-year fiscal gap. Research from Harvard and the University of California-Berkeley, as well as from the IMF, suggests that it may have actually reduced debt as a share of the economy by restoring growth.

·         The Recovery Act established an independent accountability board and required recipients to account regularly for their use of funds. This commitment to transparency ensured that rates of waste, fraud, and abuse were kept remarkably low.

The President also signed into law over a dozen additional fiscal measures following the Recovery Act to continue to boost job creation and support middle-class and working families.

·         In the four years following the Recovery Act, the President signed into law over a dozen fiscal measures that extended key features of the Act and provided new sources of support.

·         These measures included a temporary payroll tax cut for 160 million working Americans, additional extensions to the Emergency Unemployment Compensation program, expanded business tax incentives, small business tax cuts, and funding to protect teachers’ jobs.

·         These additional fiscal measures provided a total of nearly $700 billion of additional support to the economy in the first four years of the Administration. When added to the support from the Recovery Act, the total fiscal support for the economy from 2009 to 2012 exceeded $1.4 trillion.

·         Combining the effects of the Recovery Act and the additional fiscal measures that followed, the cumulative gain in employment was about 9 million job-years (years of full-time equivalent employment) through the end of 2012 relative to a world in which the Recovery Act and these other policies were not in place. 

White House Announces New Summer Opportunity Project

White House Announces New Summer Opportunity Project

The Summer Opportunity Project will give young people access to their ‘First Job,’ and encourage investment in programs supporting summer meals and learning.

“Let’s make sure every young person knows that in America, we’re all committed to helping them achieve their dreams.”

-President Barack Obama

Summer is a critical time for young people, and for many young Americans, it is also a crucial time to look for a first job—an important step in building skills and experiences for their future. Yet for a young person looking to start off in the workforce, the prospect of finding a job with a blank resume, limited education, and no meaningful connections to employers can be daunting. A study found that last summer nearly 46 percent of youth who applied for summer jobs were turned down.  The summer “opportunity gap” can contribute to gaps in achievement, employment, and college and career success, particularly for low-income students who lose access to critical supports that keep them safe, healthy and engaged during the school year. Summer opportunities have been shown to divert youth from criminal involvement and reduce overall violence, and they also offer a chance for young people to get their first exposure to the workplace and build financial skills that they can build on throughout their lives. But these benefits are only possible if young people can find those opportunities.

To meet this challenge, state and local leaders, community-based organizations, private sector leaders, philanthropic leaders, schools and other youth-serving agencies are coming together to create a set of supports that enable strong transitions from school year to school year and from high school to college and to create careers by implementing and spreading proven interventions. The Summer Opportunity Project is a multi-agency effort in partnership with the National Summer Learning Association and other collaborators to provide support to communities. The Project aims to significantly increase the percentage of youth in evidence-based summer opportunity programs, decrease the percentage of youth experiencing violence over the summer, and—more broadly—make sure that young Americans have the support they need to get their first job. 

Research shows that Black and Hispanic teenage boys lag behind their peers in summer employment and year-round jobs. This employment gap broadens as young men get older, making them the highest percentage of the nearly seven million youth 16-24 disconnected from school and work. That’s why the President’s My Brother’s Keeper Task Force recommended to the President in May of 2014 strengthening the case for summer youth employment and launching a cross-sector campaign to reduce summer learning loss and increase the number of job and internship opportunities for all young people. Today’s announcement builds on the Task Force’s commitment to this critical issue, and will engage the more than 200 communities that have accepted the My Brother’s Keeper Community Challenge and scores of cross-sector organizations working to expand opportunity for all young people.  

The Summer Opportunity Project will be launched tomorrow at a White House Summer Opportunity workshop and Champions of Change event that highlights local leaders making a difference in this space and brings together key stakeholders from around the country to share best practices and collaborate on future plans.

Key Efforts Launching at Friday’s Event in Support of the Project Include:

Private Sector Commitments

·             LinkedIn Small and Medium Business Engagement Tool. LinkedIn, the world's largest professional network on the Internet, will connect millions of small and medium sized business leaders with local and state organizations to help young people, including those who are not in school or working, access summer jobs in 72 cities. LinkedIn will also amplify the importance of summer jobs with a content series featuring top business influencers, beginning with thePresident’s LinkedIn Influencer post this morning on the topic of "My First Job.”

·             The National Summer Learning Association (NSLA) Best Practice Network. NSLA is focused on closing the achievement gap by increasing access to high-quality summer opportunities for youth. NSLA has committed to creating a national best practices knowledge base and network that equips cities, towns and counties to provide summer learning, meal and job opportunities to all children and youth who qualify for free and reduced-price meals. NSLA will convene campaign communities multiple times per year, provide technical assistance, broker resources, generate public awareness through events like National Summer Learning Day on July 14, and advocate for supportive policies.

·             New Higher Achievement Centers. Higher Achievement, a year-round, multi-year academic mentoring program for underserved middle school students in the 5th-8th grade, commits to the following activities this summer to close the achievement gap in Baltimore, DC, Pittsburgh, and Richmond: open five new Achievement Centers that are funded by the Department of Education’s Investing in Innovation (i3) grant, connect high school alumni to professional internships, bring 1200+ middle school students on college visits, and begin updating summer curricula to more closely align to Common Core State Standards.

·             LRNG Platform and Playlists Available For All Cities. LRNG, an initiative of Collective Shift, is bringing together city leaders, businesses, schools, and community institutions such as libraries and museums to transform how young people access and experience learning, and the paths they can take to success. This summer, LRNG is offering to Summer Jobs programs across the country its national digital platform and a set of LRNG Playlists and Badges that connect young people to learning opportunities like Job Readiness, Financial Literacy, and Civic Tech.

Federal Agency Commitments

·             Summer Opportunity Federal Resource Guide. Tomorrow, the Administration and NSLA will release a new Federal Resource Guide to make it easier for local governments and non-profits to identify, navigate, and use Federal programs to support summer programming. This is part of a broad effort to improve how the Federal government partners with local communities, recognizing the multifaceted nature of challenges at the local level and the opportunity to build local capacity to benefit from Federal funding and technical assistance.

·             $15 Million from the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) to Help Youth Who Serve Their Communities Pay for College. CNCS — the Federal agency that engages millions of Americans in service and in developing community solutions—has committed up to $15 million in existing Segal AmeriCorps Education Awards over the next three years to launch Summer Opportunity AmeriCorps. CNCS is collaborating with the National Summer Learning Association, other organizations, mayors, nonprofits, and other partners to develop service and service-learning projects that will enable up to 20,000 youth to gain new skills and earn money for college.

·             Department of Labor Summer Jobs and Beyond Grant Competition. Earlier this month, the Department of Labor launched a $20 million grant competition that will be awarded to approximately 10 communities for innovative approaches that provide young people with summer and year-round jobs and connect them to career pathways.  The application process closes on March 25, 2016, and funding opportunity may be found here.

·             Summer Block Parties. This June, communities around the country will host summer block parties to engage youth, families, businesses, and community leaders around making this summer active, healthy, safe and productive.  The White House will lead a national effort with local leaders and Department of Education, National Summer Learning Association, Ultimate Block Party, the Association of Children’s Museums and Civic Nation for these events.

·             Department of Education Summer Learning Portal. Through its 21st Century Community Learning Centers Program, ED is launching a Summer Learning Portal with access to additional resources and tools to help design and implement effective summer learning programs.  This forum includes creative ideas, such as aligning summer programming with resources and activities from the National Park Service to learn about the great outdoors, creating summer reading programs, visiting museums, and participating in summer community events.  The portal is available HERE. 

·             Open eBooks. Yesterday, First Lady Michelle Obama celebrated the launch of the Open eBooks App, a project that the President highlighted last spring, by releasing a video to spread the word about this resource that will be a passport to a world of learning and opportunity during summer and the school year for millions of America’s kids. The app will deliver over $250 million of reading material to students who need it most.  Open eBooks was created by a breakthrough coalition of literacy, library, publishing and technology partners who worked together over the past year to make the initiative possible. Open eBook’s partners -- Digital Public Library of America, First Book, and The New York Public Library with content support from digital books distributor Baker & Taylor -- created the app, curated the eBook collection, and developed a system for distribution and use. They received support for the app development from the Institute of Museum and Library Services and content contributions from ten major publishers.

Commitments from Cities to Expand and Improve Summer Programs

·             Los Angeles, CA. This month, Mayor Eric Garcetti announced a new goal to hire 15,000 young people in 2016 through his Hire L.A.’s Youth program, a 6-week, part-time summer jobs program designed for youth between the ages of 14 and 24 years old, who live in the City of Los Angeles, are low-income, and have a legal right to work. Hire L.A.’s Youth targets youth from families receiving CalWORKs public assistance (known at the federal level as the Department of Health and Human Services’ Temporary Assistance for Needy Families), as well as foster youth, youth on probation, and homeless youth. 

·             Seattle, WA.  This summer, Mayor Ed Murray is leading an effort with Seattle Public Schools and School’s Out Washington to reach more than 15,000 youth with summer jobs, learning, meals, enrichment and reading. Seattle is committed to doubling the number of summer jobs to 4,000. The City of Seattle will also serve about 5,000 children over 200,000 meals. The Families and Education Levy, administered by the City’s Office for Education, will invest in 23 summer learning programs for 2,000 students, and Seattle Public Schools will serve more than 5,000 students with high-quality summer programming.

·             Charlotte, NC.  As a result of a partnership between Mayor Jennifer Roberts and Microsoft’s Charlotte campus, DigiGirlz and DigiGuyz High Tech Summer Camps will provide exposure to career fields in technology to as many as 300 students. Charlotte will offer more than 360 paid internships and more than 4,000 career exploration opportunities for underprivileged youth.

Each of these cities has prioritized efforts to support youth entering the workforce as part of their My Brother’s Keeper Community Challenge initiative.

Investments in the President’s FY 2017 Budget

President Obama’s ‘First Job’ funding proposal to connect young Americans with jobs and skills training to start their careers & Summer EBT proposal to ensure low income children have year round access to the food they need to learn and grow.

While our new efforts will be crucial to supporting more at-risk youth over the summer, reaching the scale needed to create opportunities for all at-risk young Americans will require significant new investments at the federal level.

The President’s FY 2017 Budget includes nearly $6 billion in new funding to help more than 1 million young people gain the work experience, skills, and networks that come from having a first job. On February 4, the White House and the Departments of Labor and Education announced the details of that plan, including nearly doubling last year’s budget request for supporting young people who are out of school and work.

Major investments of this plan include:

·             A New $5.5 Billion Proposal to Open Doors to a First Job. The President’s Budget will propose new investments – nearly double last year’s request – to connect more than 1 million young people to first jobs over the summer and year-round. It would also create a new $2 billion competitive grant program designed to re-connect disconnected youth to educational and workforce pathways. DOL will work with Treasury to ensure that young people participating in these programs have access to safe and appropriate financial products and accounts. 

·             New Proposed Investments to Give More Americans Skills for In-Demand Jobs. The President is also proposing in his Budget $3 billion to create an American Talent Compact that would expand talent pipelines in over 50 regions to fill open jobs and attract new jobs from overseas; a $500 million Workforce Data Science and Innovation Fund to create dynamic data sets on jobs, skills, and training to help training providers and workers keep pace with rapidly changing job needs; and a $2 billion Apprenticeship Training Fund.

·             $12 Billion to Provide Summer Meals through Summer Electronic Benefits Transfer for Children. Only a fraction of the 22 million children that receive free and reduced price meals during the school year are able to access such meals when school is out of session. The FY2017 Budget invests $12 billion over ten years to reduce child hunger during the summer through a permanent Summer Electronic Benefits Transfer (Summer EBT) for Children program to provide supplemental food benefits during the summer months to all families with children eligible for free and reduced price school meals. Rigorous evaluations of Summer EBT pilots have shown the program effectively reduces food insecurity and improves nutrition.

波市帶族裔色彩傳奇老店“查理的三明治”重新開張 政要雲集剪綵

（Boston Orange 周菊子報導）在波士頓市內已是傳奇之一，有87年歷史的“查理的三明治店（Charlie’s Sandwich Shoppe）”，今（24）早在政要雲集中，隆重剪綵，重新開張。

            麻州州長查理貝克（Charlie Baker）顯然最有理由高興。他踏進店裏，和員工，老闆握手寒暄後，笑顏逐開的說，在波士頓內有家店名叫“查理”的感覺，真不是蓋的。他因此稱許店東德祿迪（Evan Deluty）把這家歷史名店保存了下來，還特地買了一袋藍莓鬆餅，帶回辦公室。總共只有32個座位，在四張桌子外，共有13個吧檯座的這餐廳，從1927年開張以來，曾經有32年是24小時營業，在種族隔離時代，是小山姆戴維斯（Sammy Davis, Jr）等非洲裔美籍爵士音樂家，以及波士頓市的傳奇社會運動家馬爾文金（Melvin King）等的聚集勝地，後來成為政客與社區領袖交換意見的最佳地點，連美國現任總統奧巴馬（Barak Obama），曾任副總統的高爾(Al Gore)等人，都曾是座上客。         

            一年多前，原東主宣佈關門，這家以早餐出名的店就一直丟空在那兒，直到在南端經營史黛拉（Stella ）餐廳的德祿迪和太太甘迪絲（Candice）把它買下來，全部重新翻修，才又延續了這家老店的歷史，曾經光顧過這家餐廳的名人、政客留影，也保留在翻新了的牆上。

            今早，波士頓現任市長馬丁華殊（Martin Walsh），前任市長雷夫連（Ray Flynn），大波士頓非洲裔傳奇人物馬爾文金（Melvin King），以及麻州眾議員麥家威（Aaron Michlewitz），羅辛（Byron Rushing），波士頓市議會議長吳弭（Michelle Wu），波市議員林乃肯（Bill Linehan），米高法拉提（Michael Fleherty）等人，也都趕來致意，寒暄。

            雷夫連指出，這家店不只代表歷史，更意味著連接了移民的過去。

            馬丁華殊則說，“查理”重新開張意味著波士頓經濟向榮。他希望一家一家的，陸續有更多店開張。