Obama Signs Spending Bill to Protect Teachers' Jobs

This is the VOA Special English Education Report, from voaspecialenglish.com | facebook.com/voalearningenglish President Obama signed legislation in August to provide twenty-six billion dollars to the states for education and healthcare. The measure includes ten billion dollars for education and sixteen billion for Medicaid, the joint state-federal government medical program for the poor. The legislation will help one hundred sixty thousand teachers and one hundred fifty thousand police and public service workers keep their jobs. The House of Representatives approved the bill August tenth. House members had already begun a six-week holiday when the Senate approved the measure. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi took the rare step of calling House lawmakers back to Washington to vote on the bill and send it to President Obama without delay.President Obama has stressed the importance of education for all Americans. He said this is necessary for the country to compete among some of the world's fastest growing economies.Earlier in the week, the president spoke at the University of Texas. He talked about the decrease in college graduation rates in the United States. He said: "In a single generation, we've fallen from first place to twelfth place in college graduation rates for young adults. That is unacceptable, but it is not irreversible. We can retake the lead." President Obama said educational success and economic well-being are linked. His goal is to increase the percentage of college graduates from forty percent to sixty percent by the year twenty-twenty.The president said the federal government has already reformed the student loan system and increased tax credits for families struggling to pay college education costs. Some Republican lawmakers criticized the new measure. House Republican leader John Boehner dismissed the emergency jobs measure as more wasteful spending aimed at pleasing the Democrats' traditional union allies.Hours before the vote, President Obama told reporters at the White House that education and the safety of communities should not be political issues. He said: "Those interests are widely shared throughout this country. A challenge that affects parents, children and citizens in almost every community in America should not be a Democratic problem or a Republican problem. It is an American problem." And that's the VOA Special English Education Report. (Adapted from a radio program broadcast 12Aug2010)