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Obama Open To Incremental Steps On Job Growth
President Obama indicated Tuesday he's open to "incremental steps" on job growth legislation.
"It's realistic for us to get a package moving quickly that may not include all the things I think need to be done," he said at a White House briefing after meeting with a bipartisan delegation of congressional leaders on job growth initiatives.
Obama said he hoped an initial bill would help "build trust" and allow Congress to then move on to other measures.
"We spent a lot of time in this meeting discussing a jobs package and how we can move forward on that," Obama said. "And if there are additional ideas, I will consider them."
Top Republicans emerged from the meeting expressing cautious optimism that an agreement could be reached on a "small package" to help lower the country's 9.7 percent unemployment rate.
The question of how to balance immediate economic concerns with growing fears of skyrocketing budget deficits is just one of several contentious issues dividing Obama and top Republicans.
Sharp debates over economic management, health care reform and other topics have contributed to what many observers now characterize as a toxic political climate on Capitol Hill.
In his recent State of the Union address, Obama called for monthly meetings with both Democratic and GOP leaders as a way to help break the partisan logjam.
Tuesday's meeting included House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Minority Leader John Boehner, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
The same group is tentatively scheduled to meet February 25 to discuss health care reform.
"Part of what we'd like to see is the ability of Congress to move forward in a more bipartisan fashion on some of the key challenges that the country is facing right now," Obama said at the start of Tuesday's meeting. "I think it's fair to say that the American people are frustrated with the lack of progress on some key issues."
The president asserted that while "the parties are not going to agree on every single item, there should be some areas where we can agree and we can get some things done." He also backed the idea of having more "vigorous debates" on subjects where a bipartisan agreement cannot be reached.
McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, told reporters after the meeting that "there's a chance we could move (a jobs bill) forward on a bipartisan basis." It's possible "the Senate could get there with a small package."
McConnell stressed traditional GOP priorities such as nuclear power, off-shore oil drilling, and clean coal technology. He also urged passage of stalled trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea.
Such measures, he argued, would be "jobs generators."
Emphasizing deficit-related concerns, Boehner said he urged the president to push for immediate spending cuts, as opposed to deciding to "punt all of this off to some spending commission."
Calls for bipartisanship have grown in the wake of GOP Sen. Scott Brown's upset win in the recent Massachusetts special election. Brown's victory stripped Democrats of their 60-seat Senate supermajority and gave Republicans enough votes to block most legislation.
Since Brown's election, Democrats have moved away from introducing a comprehensive jobs bill similar to the $154 billion legislation passed by the House in December.
Instead, Democratic leaders have appeared to be more inclined to push through smaller measures in stages.
The Democrats' agenda includes renewing existing highway legislation for a year, which is expected to result in a million jobs, Reid recently said. It also includes enacting small-business and job-creation tax credits and extending Build America Bonds, a stimulus measure that helps states and municipalities fund capital construction projects.
The president's fiscal 2011 budget, unveiled last week, would direct $50 billion to job creation measures, including clean energy initiatives and road projects.
Top Democrats would also like to enact the president's Cash for Caulkers proposal, which would subsidize making homes and buildings more energy efficient.
The first job creation bill of the new year, promoted by Sens. Charles Schumer, D-New York, and Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, aids any private sector employer who hires a worker who's been unemployed for at least 60 days. That employer is absolved of paying the 6.2 percent share of the employee's Social Security payroll tax for the rest of 2010.
Also, employers who keep these workers on the payroll continuously for a year would be eligible for a $1,000 tax credit on their 2011 tax returns.
Democrats' other measures, however, aren't likely to get as warm a reception from the GOP. Several Republican senators have come out against using TARP bank bailout funds to jump-start lending to small businesses, and against raising taxes on the wealthy.
Obama has promoted the idea of boosting small business lending by giving $30 billion in TARP funds to banks and providing these firms with a $5,000 tax credit for each addition to their payrolls.
Norman Ornstein, a political observer at the American Enterprise Institute, recently argued that out of all legislation before Congress, a jobs bill is most likely to bring Republicans and Democrats together.
"Not because Republicans are eager to give Obama and the Democrats the victory (and) not because they have a fundamental agreement with a lot of things they want to do," he said. But politically, "to say you're going to oppose even a government program on jobs is a harder thing to do than say you're going to oppose a government takeover of the health care system."
Sources: MSNBC, CNN
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