Cleaver explains how Education Jobs bill will affect Missouri

In his weekly EC from DC newsletter, Congressman Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo. addresses the Education Jobs and Medicaid Assistance Act, which was signed into law this week:

This week the President signed H.R. 1586 the Education Jobs and Medicaid Assistance Act into law. The legislation will save or create 319,000 American jobs in local communities, including 161,000 teacher jobs, and also discourages American corporations from shipping jobs overseas.


The legislation includes $10 billion to save teacher jobs and $16.1 billion in health assistance to the states. The funding will also keep police officers and firefighters on the job. The bill is completely paid for.

Under the bill, Missouri will receive an estimated $189 million in emergency education funding. It is estimated that 3,300 Missouri teacher jobs would be saved by this funding.

The legislation uses the same formula to distribute the education funds to states as was used in the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund under the Recovery Act. The formula allocates funds based on each state’s relative population of individuals ages 5 to 24 and of each state’s share of the total population. Governors will distribute funds to districts using the state’s primary funding formulae for K-12 education or each district’s share of Title I. Once the bill is enacted, Governors will be required to tell local school districts which formula they plan to use to allocate the funds to ensure districts can plan immediately to hire back staff.

I was proud to support this legislation. School is starting soon, and these funds are immediately needed. In the Kansas City school district alone, nearly 600 employees overall have involuntarily lost their jobs. Failure to pass this bill would have forced states to lay off more workers, cut more services, and raise taxes more than they would otherwise to balance their budgets. These actions would further slow our economic recovery.