President Obama today just wrapped up a speech at the Brookings Institution in Washington urging the federal government to do more to help smaller businesses to help create jobs.

Obama’s new proposal aims at investing $50 billion for infrastructure, the removal of capital-gains taxes on new investments for up to a year, more investments in clean energy, and likely most importantly, a tax break for small businesses. The main hope, besides getting firms to increase capital spending, is to get small businesses to hire more people as U.S. unemployment remains above 10-percent.

The Obama administration did not specify how much money the new initiative would cost, but did confirm the money would come from new debt and not from TARP.

Obama said during his speech that there is, “an urgent need to accelerate job growth in the short term,”

The new urging of the President comes as Japan announces its own new $80.6 billion (Y7,200 billion) economic stimulus plan.

The White House says the 2009 $787 billion stimulus package (see our Feb 17, 2009 coverage when the bill was signed by the President) increased employment by 650,000.