Obama touts jobs bill benefits for small business

Pres­i­dent Barack Obama holds the Amer­i­can Jobs Act as he speaks at North Car­olina State Uni­ver­sity in Raleigh, N.C., Wednes­day, Sept. 14, 2011. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome)

DARLENE SUPERVILLE

Asso­ci­ated Press

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Pres­i­dent Barack Obama urged enthu­si­as­tic col­lege stu­dents Wednes­day to join him in his fight to get Con­gress to act on his new jobs bill. “Every sin­gle one of you can help make this bill a real­ity,” the pres­i­dent called out at a hot and noisy rally at North Car­olina State University.

Some­one in the crowd yelled out, “I love you!”

“If you love me you got to help me pass this bill,” the pres­i­dent responded.

It was Obama’s sec­ond campaign-style rally in two days as he pushes for action on his $450 bil­lion jobs plan. His pro­gram is run­ning into a buzz saw of oppo­si­tion from Repub­li­cans — and even some in his own Demo­c­ra­tic Party — over his plans to raise taxes on the wealthy and cor­po­ra­tions to pay for it.

The pres­i­dent was in Ohio Tues­day, and last week in Vir­ginia, as he trav­els key elec­toral states to sell the plan with the econ­omy stuck in neu­tral head­ing into his 2012 re-election campaign.

On Wednes­day Obama’s focus was small busi­nesses, which would be helped by Social Secu­rity pay­roll tax cuts. Before speak­ing, he toured West­Star Pre­ci­sion, a small busi­ness in the Raleigh sub­urb of Apex. It makes spe­cial­ized com­po­nents for the aero­space, med­ical and alter­na­tive energy industries.

He also announced plans to try to speed pay­ments to fed­eral contractors.

Repub­li­cans have accused Obama of play­ing pol­i­tics by pre­sent­ing them with tax hike ideas they’ve already rejected. But Obama said Wednes­day, “We’ve got to make sure every­body pays their fair share, includ­ing the wealth­i­est Amer­i­cans and the biggest corporations.”

“It’d be nice if we could do it all, but we can’t. We’ve got to make choices. That’s what governing’s about. And we know what’s right,” the pres­i­dent said.

He told the stu­dents: “The time for hand-wringing is over. The time for mop­ing around is over. We’ve got to kick off our bed­room slip­pers and put on our march­ing shoes.”

The president’s trip to North Car­olina, a tra­di­tion­ally Repub­li­can state he won in 2008, drew scorn from Republicans.

“This pres­i­dent is in love with the sound of his own voice, he’s in love with cam­paign­ing, he’s in love with fundrais­ing, and he’s in love with the stump,” said Repub­li­can National Com­mit­tee Chair­man Reince Priebus. “And he’s doing what he loves to do best, which is to go to bat­tle­ground states, mas­quer­ade as offi­cial busi­ness, use tax­payer money to do it, and campaign.”

As the pres­i­dent barn­stormed the coun­try to build sup­port for his plan, which he first unveiled last week in a speech to Con­gress, he drew sup­port from House Democrats.

About 50 Demo­c­ra­tic law­mak­ers called Wednes­day for quick pas­sage of the jobs bill and urged Amer­i­cans to make their case in calls to lawmakers.

“Four­teen mil­lion peo­ple do not have 14 months to wait,” said Rep. John Lar­son, D-Conn., who was sur­rounded by his col­leagues on the steps of the Capitol’s East Front. He was refer­ring to the num­ber of unem­ployed Amer­i­cans and the time until the next election.

Still, there appeared to be lit­tle if any chance that the pro­posal would pass Con­gress in one piece.

Repub­li­cans who con­trol the House have made clear they have lit­tle inter­est in Obama’s plans to increase spend­ing for things like school con­struc­tion, high­ways, bridges and other projects, which accounts for nearly $200 bil­lion of the leg­is­la­tion. GOP law­mak­ers seem more open to Obama’s plans to extend unem­ploy­ment insur­ance and cut the Social Secu­rity pay­roll tax for work­ers and businesses.

Even in the Democratic-led Sen­ate, Major­ity Leader Harry Reid has sug­gested that Obama is unlikely to get his way in his call for imme­di­ate action by Con­gress. Reid has said there are some other issues that need to be dealt with first, includ­ing trans­porta­tion funding.

Obama has made clear he’d sign a por­tion of the leg­is­la­tion if that’s all Con­gress could agree on, although he’s said he would con­tinue to fight to pass the whole thing.

Posted by AP News on Sep 14 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.