Senate nears vote to defeat Obama’s jobs bill

Pres­i­dent Barack Obama arrives to speak at the Inter­na­tional Broth­er­hood of Elec­tri­cal Work­ers (IBEW) Local No. 5 Train­ing Cen­ter in Pitts­burgh Tues­day. (Asso­ci­ated Press | Susan Walsh)

ANDREW TAYLOR

BEN FELLER

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — Despite Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s exhor­ta­tions, the Sen­ate pre­pared to swiftly kill his jobs pack­age Tues­day and the White House and con­gres­sional lead­ers were already mov­ing on to other ways to cut the nation’s painfully high unem­ploy­ment with­out rais­ing taxes.

Obama’s $447 bil­lion jobs bill didn’t fig­ure to get a sin­gle GOP vote, even after his week­s­long campaign-style effort to drum up sup­port for a mea­sure he said would reduce the job­less rate from its cur­rent 9.1 percent.

Antic­i­pat­ing defeat, Obama promised to try again in smaller bites. “If they don’t pass the whole pack­age we’re going to break it up into con­stituent parts” and try to push them through sep­a­rately, Obama told mem­bers of his jobs council.

Still he pressed hard for Sen­ate pas­sage of the entire bill.

“Any sen­a­tor who votes no should have to look you in the eye and tell you what exactly they’re opposed to,” Obama said to a union audi­ence in Pitts­burgh. Look­ing ahead to next year’s elec­tions, he said, “I think they’ll have a hard time explain­ing why they voted no on this bill — other than the fact that I pro­posed it.”

In fact, Demo­c­ra­tic defec­tions appeared to ensure that the mea­sure would fail to win a sim­ple major­ity, much less the 60 votes needed to over­come a Repub­li­cans filibuster.

Obama’s plan would com­bine Social Secu­rity pay­roll tax cuts for work­ers and busi­nesses and other tax relief total­ing about $270 bil­lion with $175 bil­lion in new 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.

Obama says that the plan — more than half the size of his 2009 eco­nomic stim­u­lus mea­sure — would be an insur­ance pol­icy against a double-dip reces­sion and that con­tin­ued eco­nomic inter­ven­tion is essen­tial given slower-than-hoped job growth.

“This is gut check time,” Obama said. “Right now, our econ­omy needs a jolt. Right now. And today, the Sen­ate of the United States has a chance to do some­thing, right now, by vot­ing for the Amer­i­can Jobs Act.”

Unlike the 2009 leg­is­la­tion, the cur­rent plan would be paid for with a 5.6 per­cent sur­charge on income exceed­ing $1 mil­lion that would raise about $450 bil­lion over the com­ing decade.

“Democ­rats’ sole pro­posal is to keep doing what hasn’t worked — along with a mas­sive tax hike that we know won’t cre­ate jobs,” Sen­ate Minor­ity Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Tues­day, say­ing there are 1.5 mil­lion fewer jobs than when Obama’s 2009 eco­nomic pack­age became law. “Why on earth would you sup­port an approach that we already know won’t work?” McConnell said.

Demo­c­ra­tic sup­port isn’t unan­i­mous either. Mod­er­ates includ­ing Sens. Ben Nel­son of Nebraska and Joe Manchin of West Vir­ginia, both up for re-election next year in states where Obama fig­ures to lose, may aban­don Obama on this issue.

The White House and Demo­c­ra­tic lead­ers say the great major­ity of Democ­rats will vote for the plan, how­ever. Sup­port among Democ­rats has been shored up by replac­ing Obama’s tax increases — par­tic­u­larly a pro­posal to limit the value of item­ized deduc­tions for fam­i­lies mak­ing more than $250,000 — with the sur­charge on millionaires.

That mil­lion­aires pro­posal would hit about 392,000 house­holds, accord­ing to an analy­sis by the Tax Pol­icy Cen­ter, a Wash­ing­ton think tank. In 2013, the first year the tax would take effect, those wealthy house­holds would see their taxes increase by an aver­age of $110,500, accord­ing to the analysis.

Next in Con­gress, how­ever, both the House and Sen­ate will turn Wednes­day to approv­ing trade agree­ments with Colom­bia, Panama and South Korea that could cre­ate tens of thou­sands of jobs, one of the few areas of agree­ment between Repub­li­cans and the admin­is­tra­tion on boost­ing the economy.

In com­ing weeks and months, Democ­rats promise fur­ther votes on jobs. But it remains to be seen how much of that effort will involve more campaign-stoked bat­tles with Repub­li­cans and how much will include seek­ing com­mon ground in hopes of actu­ally pass­ing legislation.

Lead­ers of the GOP-controlled House have sig­naled they sup­port tax cuts for small busi­nesses and changes to job­less insur­ance to allow states to use unem­ploy­ment funds for on-the-job train­ing. And they’ve sig­naled they’ll be will­ing to accept an exten­sion of Obama’s 2 per­cent­age point pay­roll tax cut. But stimulus-style spend­ing is a non­starter with the tea party-infused chamber.

Tuesday’s vote played out as dis­af­fected crowds con­tin­ued to occupy Wall Street, a square in Wash­ing­ton and parts of other cities around the coun­try in protest of income inequal­ity and related issues.

Obama advis­ers said they were work­ing with Sen­ate Demo­c­ra­tic lead­ers on how and when to break out sep­a­rate aspects of the over­all jobs bill for votes.

Even before Tuesday’s defeat, the White House was cast­ing the Sen­ate vote as but the first act in what one Obama adviser called a long-term play — essen­tially, an autumn full of action to force Con­gress to take action on jobs. Senior Obama offi­cials said it was impor­tant for the Sen­ate to act to keep pres­sure on the Republican-led House.

The White House appears most con­fi­dent that it will be win enact­ment to con­tinue a 2-point pay­roll tax cut through 2012 and to extend emer­gency unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits to mil­lions of peo­ple — if only because, in the White House view, Repub­li­cans won’t want to accept the harm of let­ting those pro­vi­sions expire.

White House offi­cials are also hope­ful of ulti­mately gar­ner­ing votes for the approval of infra­struc­ture spend­ing and tax cred­its for busi­nesses that hire unem­ployed veterans.

Obama promised to press for quick action on pub­lic works spending.

“Hav­ing rel­e­vant busi­nesses get behind an effort to move this infra­struc­ture agenda for­ward is a pri­or­ity,” Obama told 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.

Posted by AP News on Oct 11 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.