WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden is asking Congress for US$8 billion (S$10.6 billion) to hire hundreds of thousands of workers for a New Deal-inspired jobs programme to fight climate change around the United States.

The request – for US$8 billion in total provided over a decade, to be put towards hiring 50,000 new workers annually by 2031 – is included in the President’s budget proposal released on March 11. It follows his vow in last week’s State of the Union address to triple the number of workers in the recently launched American Climate Corps programme.

The programme was backed by the Green New Deal authors – Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey, both Democrats – who initially envisioned employing 1.5 million young people to learn jobs like restoring communities damaged by climate change, installing solar panels and making homes more energy efficient.

Some US$10 billion sought for the programme was dropped from Mr Biden’s signature climate law, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. But the White House announced a slimmed-down version of the initiative in September and said it would recruit 20,000 people for jobs like helping communities defend against storm surge and flooding, restoring coastal wetlands and building renewable energy projects.

Since then, according to the White House, some 50,000 Americans have expressed interest in joining the jobs training programme, which offers young people opportunities such as earning US$15 an hour to learn skills in wildfire prevention and forest management.

Mr Biden’s American Climate Corps was inspired by former president Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps, the 1933 New Deal programme that put millions to work during the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. The new climate corps has come under scrutiny from Congressional Republicans who are unlikely to approve Mr Biden’s request as is. BLOOMBERG