Obama, Congress leaders seek cooperation on jobs

House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, left, accom­pa­nied by Sen­ate Minor­ity Leader Mitch McConnell of Ken­tucky, speaks dur­ing a news con­fer­ence on Capi­tol Hill in Wash­ing­ton, Wednes­day, to talk about their lunch meet­ing with Pres­i­dent Obama to dis­cuss ris­ing gaso­line prices. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

JIM KUHNHENN

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — After quar­rel­ing for months, Pres­i­dent Barack Obama and the top two Repub­li­cans in Con­gress expressed opti­mism Wednes­day about find­ing a com­mon jobs and energy agenda, prod­ded by polit­i­cal real­ity to show results in an elec­tion year.

Meet­ing face-to-face for the first time since July, Obama, the Repub­li­can lead­ers and top Demo­c­ra­tic law­mak­ers emerged with­out the acri­mony and crises that have been nor­mal hall­marks of their relationships.

“The pres­i­dent believes that there were some areas where we could find com­mon ground, and frankly I was encour­aged,” House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said.

The ses­sion, called by Obama, came after bipar­ti­san majori­ties in Con­gress passed an exten­sion of a pay­roll tax cut sought by the pres­i­dent. White House and con­gres­sional aides said par­tic­i­pants con­cluded it was pos­si­ble to act on more leg­is­la­tion despite the par­ti­san pres­sures of an elec­tion year.

“I think there is an indi­ca­tion here that we can get some things done, and we look for­ward to doing that,” White House spokesman Jay Car­ney said.

Coop­er­a­tion is likely on mea­sures that face the least resis­tance, such as uncon­tro­ver­sial ini­tia­tives aimed at help­ing small busi­nesses raise cap­i­tal and cre­ate jobs. Car­ney said ele­ments of a House Repub­li­can bill that extends assis­tance to small busi­nesses “over­lap con­sid­er­ably with the president’s priorities.”

Though hardly an all-out thaw in the rela­tion­ship, the meet­ing sig­naled a new empha­sis on find­ing com­mon ground. Dri­ving Repub­li­can efforts to find leg­isla­tive suc­cesses are pub­lic approval lev­els for Con­gress and con­gres­sional Repub­li­cans in par­tic­u­lar that are at his­toric lows. And while White House offi­cials believe the clashes with Con­gress have improved Obama’s stand­ing, they say any leg­isla­tive accom­plish­ments would accrue to his ben­e­fit as well.

Sen­ate Minor­ity Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said the bur­den now falls on Major­ity Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

“I hope that the major­ity leader, who’s respon­si­ble . for decid­ing what bills we will turn to, will turn to bills that can actu­ally pass and be signed into law,” McConnell said.

Still, Obama and the lead­ers dis­agreed on whether the pres­i­dent imme­di­ately should grant a per­mit for a Canada-to-Texas oil pipeline. Obama blocked the Key­stone XL pipeline this year, cit­ing uncer­tainty over a route that avoids the envi­ron­men­tally sen­si­tive Sand Hills region in Nebraska.

The pipeline’s Cana­dian builder, Tran­sCanada, said Mon­day it still hopes to build the full 1,700-mile pipeline, and the White House said it would review an appli­ca­tion for a new route.

Car­ney said calls to approve the pipeline now are “insult­ing to the Amer­i­can peo­ple” because there is no route to approve.

McConnell’s office said in a state­ment that in the face of ris­ing oil prices, the Obama admin­is­tra­tion could “stop tak­ing actions that increase the price at the pump while lim­it­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for Amer­i­can job growth.”

The House Repub­li­can bills aimed at small busi­ness would remove a Secu­ri­ties and Exchange Com­mis­sion ban pre­vent­ing small busi­nesses from using adver­tise­ments to solicit investors; elim­i­nate SEC restric­tions that pre­vent “crowd­fund­ing” so entre­pre­neurs can raise equity cap­i­tal from a large pool of small investors; make it eas­ier for small busi­nesses to go pub­lic by increas­ing the thresh­old under which com­pa­nies are exempt from SEC reg­is­tra­tion; and raise the share­holder reg­is­tra­tion require­ment thresh­old from 500 share­hold­ers to 1,000 shareholders.

Wednesday’s meet­ing was the first such ses­sion at the White House since last sum­mer, when the admin­is­tra­tion and Con­gress were fiercely nego­ti­at­ing to avoid a gov­ern­ment default.

Under­scor­ing the effort to keep the meet­ing low-key, the White House didn’t per­mit pho­tographs of the start of the session.

Attend­ing the meet­ing were Obama, Boehner, McConnell, Reid, Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden and House Minor­ity Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

The meet­ing con­trasts with the hard-line tone the White House took against con­gres­sional Repub­li­cans after the summer’s debt cri­sis talks failed to result in a deficit-reduction “grand bar­gain.” Obama then launched a $447 bil­lion jobs pro­posal and cam­paigned in two high-profile bus tours to draw atten­tion to his plans.

Con­gress approved some ele­ments of his eco­nomic agenda, includ­ing trade agree­ments with South Korea, Panama and Colom­bia. But pro­pos­als to cre­ate con­struc­tion jobs and to pre­vent lay­offs of pub­lic employ­ees went nowhere, and Obama’s plan to pay for his plan by rais­ing taxes on the wealthy also fell by the wayside.

The clash between the White House and Repub­li­cans cul­mi­nated ear­lier in Feb­ru­ary in Repub­li­can acqui­es­cence to a Social Secu­rity pay­roll tax cut exten­sion with­out off­set­ting cuts in gov­ern­ment spending.

Besides their dif­fer­ences on the oil pipeline, both sides also are embroiled in a skir­mish over a con­tra­cep­tion require­ment in the new health care law. Repub­li­cans say it forces employ­ers to pro­vide health plans that offer con­tra­cep­tion even though they may have reli­gious objec­tions to such coverage.

Posted by AP News on Feb 29 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.