Morgan Hargrave's blog

With health care reform off their plates (for now), the House of Representatives has begun to turn its attention to another pressing issue: jobs.  While the Recovery Act has created hundreds of thousands of jobs, helped get the economy growing again, and made investments in important sectors, it has only been able to slow job loss rather than actually decreasing the unemployment rate.  With that in mind, the House hopes to draft another piece of job-focused

After committing almost $50 billion to new energy priorities through the Recovery Act, President Obama has made sure the federal government will lead by example. On October 5th, he signed an Executive Order that lays out "sustainability goals for Federal agencies and focuses on making improvements in their environmental, energy and economic performance." The order requires federal agencies to "measure, manage, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions" and sets the following targets:

* 30% reduction in vehicle fleet petroleum use by 2020;

Texas cities and counties will soon be getting greener thanks to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. On March 26, the US Department of Energy announced it would be releasing the $3.2 billion in Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grants funded by the ARRA. As expected, more than $208 million dollars will be available to entities in Texas to support energy efficiency initiatives, with approximately $163 million available to large cities and counties according to pre-defined formulas based on population and energy use statistics. The remaining balance, approximately $45 million, will go to the State Energy Conservation Office (SECO), which will be responsible for allocating sixty percent of the funds to smaller cities and counties and dispersing the leftover forty percent via a discretionary grant process. To find out when and where the funds could end up, see below.