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Obama willing to move jobs bill in pieces
President Barack Obama said Tuesday he’s prepared to break his jobs bill into pieces and try to move it that way, hours before the measure faced likely defeat at the hands of Republican senators opposed to stimulus spending and a tax surcharge on millionaires.
“I don’t know how Congress will respond to the overall package, but our expectation is if they don’t pass the whole package we’re going to break it up into constituent parts,” Obama told members of his jobs council in Pittsburgh not long before the first congressional vote on the US$447 billion jobs plan.
The plan combines payroll tax cuts for workers and businesses with $175 billion in spending on roads, school repairs and other infrastructure, as well as unemployment assistance and help to local governments to avoid layoffs of teachers, firefighters and police officers.
Republicans say that the current plan is just another failed stimulus attempt.
“It’s not a jobs bill. In our view, it’s another stimulus bill,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told Fox News last week. “I don’t think it’ll pass and I don’t think it should.” House GOP leaders say they won’t bring the measure to the floor.
Despite Republican opposition to new spending, Obama singled out public works infrastructure spending in the plan as something that should move quickly.
“Having relevant businesses get behind an effort to move this infrastructure agenda forward is a priority,” Obama told the group of corporate and labor leaders Tuesday.
“We’re going to need a push I think from the business community in particular in order to get this across the finish line,” he said.
The White House remains hopeful that infrastructure spending is one of the areas where they can get Republican votes.
After meeting with his jobs council and giving a speech in Pittsburgh, Obama was to appear later Tuesday in Orlando, Fla., with a group of unemployed construction workers that the White House said would benefit from passage of the jobs plan. Both states are crucial to his re-election race next year.
