WASHINGTON -- The president is headed to Home Depot.
President Barack Obama has selected a Washington, D.C.-area Home Depot store as the backdrop for a speech Tuesday where he is expected to push again for Congress to pass new tax breaks and other incentives for homeowners to retrofit their homes to make them more energy-efficient.
Obama also is expected to meet at the store with a group of invited small business owners, representatives of major manufacturing companies and labor union officials to discuss ways to boost job creation by spurring home improvements.The Home Depot visit comes about two weeks after Frank Blake, CEO of Atlanta-based Home Depot, visited the White House as one of about 130 attendees at an Obama jobs summit.
The home improvement retail business continues to suffer despite signs of recovery in other retail segments. Some Wall Street analysts have suggested housing and home improvement could continue to drag down the overall economy.By some estimates, the home furnishing and building products market lost more than $140 billion over the past three years and shed nearly 600,000 jobs this year and last year.
Obama on Dec. 8 suggested that Congress should consider new programs to provide incentives to homeowners who retrofit their houses to make them more energy efficient with improvements such as updated appliances, better windows and insulation.
Obama also wants to expand Recovery Act initiatives to include more programs to support energy efficiency.Already, about $8 billion of the $787 billion Recovery Act is earmarked for energy saving home improvements, such as tax breaks and other incentives for installing insulation, sealing leaks and modernizing heating and air conditioning systems.
In July, U.S. Reps. Hank Johnson, a Lithonia Democrat, and Nathan Deal, a Gainesville Republican, introduced legislation that would give homeowners up to $2,000 in tax breaks for a wide range of home improvement projects, such as updating kitchens or purchasing mattresses, furniture or paint.
That legislation is still pending in a House committee.
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