Last month, Rep. George Miller introduced the Local Jobs for America Act, a $100 billion dollar bill that would directly deliver needed resources to local communities to provide as many as 1 million jobs.

Specifically, the Local Jobs for America Act invests:

$75 billion over two years to local communities to hire vital staff
Funding for 50,000 on-the-job private-sector training positions

The bill also includes provisions already approved by the House:

$23 billion this year to help states support 250,000 education jobs
$1.18 billion to put 5,500 law enforcement officers on the beat
$500 million to retrain, rehire, and hire firefighters

This money would mostly be delivered through community development block grants, and would not be offset, representing a true stimulus.

The Local Jobs for America Act has 105 sponsors, but leadership has not remarked much upon it since its introduction. After a few weeks of relative quiet about this bill, the Campaign for America’s Future just blasted their list calling to support this jobs measure. The text of the letter is below.

CAF touts the direct government hiring implicit in the bill, and defines the stakes:

Over 20 million people are in need of full-time work. Long-term unemployment is at record heights. Consumers are still tightening their belts; small businesses are looking for loans and customers. Interest rates are already at record lows. States and localities are laying off workers and cutting services.

Only our federal government can step in and act.

CAF is asking its supporters to call their representatives and ask them to endorse the Local Jobs for America Act. It’s a sign that at least one progressive group is highlighting the jobs crisis and the need for direct action.

The letter follows.

The pundits say the President and Congress should talk more about jobs. At Campaign for America’s Future, we say they should actually create more jobs.

Click here to tell your House representative: Sponsor the “Local Jobs For America Act.”

Over 100 members of the House have stepped up, sponsoring the “Local Jobs For America Act” which would invest billions into direct government hiring at the state and local level, creating or saving an estimated one million jobs.

That’s a good down payment on what we need. Now we need to double the number of sponsors to ensure the bill moves forward.

Click here to tell your House representative: Sponsor the “Local Jobs For America Act.”

Right now, the Jobs For America coalition – of which Campaign for America’s Future is a member – is conducting an all-out drive to secure sponsorships from a majority of the House.

And time is running out if we are to pass jobs legislation that will have an impact this year, while we are still suffering from this brutal recession.

Congress needs to heed our call, immediately.

Click here to tell your House representative: Sponsor the “Local Jobs For America Act.”

We’re digging out of a deep hole, three years of job losses and the Great Recession. The president’s initial recovery plan helped stem the losses, and stop the hemorrhaging of jobs.

But we need to create 400,000 jobs a month through January 2013 to make up what we lost in the recession. We must do more.

Over 20 million people are in need of full-time work. Long-term unemployment is at record heights. Consumers are still tightening their belts; small businesses are looking for loans and customers. Interest rates are already at record lows. States and localities are laying off workers and cutting services.

Only our federal government can step in and act.

Click here to tell your House representative: Sponsor the “Local Jobs For America Act.”

The “Local Jobs For America Act” is a key step. It gets money to local governments and non-profits to put people to work. It goes right to where the jobs are needed the most.

Some say nothing can be done. They want to wait for the economy to come back on its own – or pass even more tax cuts that we’ve seen don’t work.

For the sake of the millions who need jobs now, we cannot let inaction grip our Congress. It’s up to us to get Congress on track.

Let’s get to work, and get America back to work.