Obama also asked listeners to his Saturday’s address to tell their senators to support the bill, which he’s been lobbying for aggressively against Republican opposition since unveiling it a month ago.
With the economy listless and unemployment stuck above 9 percent moving into the 2012 presidential campaign, Obama said the bill “can help guard against another downturn here in America.”
“But if we don’t act, the opposite will be true,” Obama said. “There will be fewer jobs and weaker growth. So any senator out there who’s thinking about voting against this jobs bill needs to explain why they would oppose something that we know would improve our economic situation.”
Obama’s jobs plan would reduce payroll taxes on workers and employers, extend benefits to long-term unemployed people, spend money on public-works projects and help states keep teachers, police officers and firefighters on the job.
He proposed paying for the plan mainly by closing loopholes for oil-and-gas companies and raising taxes on individuals making more than $200,000 a year and couples making more than $250,000. Those proposals were rejected by Senate Democrats who substituted a tax on millionaires, with Obama’s agreement.
But with Republicans opposed to much of the new spending in the bill and to tax hikes, the legislation stands no chance of getting through the Republican-controlled House of Representatives in its current form, even if Senate Democrats were able to muster the necessary Republican support to get it through the Senate.
Despite the opposition, Obama intends to keep pushing for the plan in an effort to show the public that Republicans are standing in the way. “The proposals in this bill are steps we have to take if we want to build an economy that lasts; if we want to be able to compete with other countries for jobs that restore a sense of security for the middle class,” Obama said.
“There are too many people hurting in this country for us to simply do nothing,” he said. “The economy is too fragile for us to let politics get in the way of action.” Despite opposition to the overall bill, individual elements of it may well get through Congress, particularly an extension and expansion of a payroll-tax cut that took effect on January 1.
Republicans used their weekly address to criticize the plan. Republican Sen. John Thune called it “nothing but a rehash of the same failed ideas he’s already tried, combined with a huge tax increase.”
(AP)
