Jobs

In last night's state of the union President Obama talked about the jobs that have been saved or created. In this morning's press leading Republican have claimed that the stimulus didn't do much of anything for jobs.

I'm getting ready to go to work this morning, as I have every morning since July 1, in large part due to the stimulus. My position is grant funded. Last year grants shrunk in a major way. So my boss spent a lot of May trying to figure out how we would be able to keep all 5 of us on. In the end we got stimulus funding via a state contract. The stimulus funds are paying for a large portion of the programming we offer, allowing our other grant funds to go to salary.

If we cut the stimulus out of our budget I would be working 1/3-1/2 time right now. Our admin assistant (a single mother of a preschooler) would be unemployed or not working more than 1/3 time.

We're not sure what will happen in July. But we're working hard to accomplish our goals and looking for new grants to keep us going.