Bernie Sanders asks Congress to spend $5.5 billion on 1 million jobs for youths [View all]

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Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday called on Congress to immediately fund a million jobs for disadvantaged young Americans, adding to a pile of high-cost plans that might only become reality if he prevails in his longshot bid for the White House.

Sanders’s bill, which he introduced in a D.C. neighborhood with relatively high unemployment and crime rates, would send $5.5 billion to local and state governments to fund job-training programs. Much of the money would go to helping unemployed African Americans. Sanders suggested the investment could pay for itself if it keeps more young black men out of jail.

“If current trends continue, 1 in 3 black males born today can expect to spend time in prison during his lifetime. This is an unspeakable tragedy,” Sanders said. “But this crisis is not just a destruction of human life. It is also very, very costly to the taxpayers.” Sanders pegged the country’s annual prison tab at $70 billion.

“It makes a lot more sense to me to be investing in jobs, in job training . . . than to be building more and more jails and to be locking more and more people up,” Sanders said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/bernie-sanders-asks-congress-to-spend-55-billion-on-1-million-jobs-for-youths/2015/06/04/0354e9dc-0ae6-11e5-9e39-0db921c47b93_story.html