TRUMP'S 1st JOINT CONGRESSIONAL ADDRESS MET W/ LOUD APPROVAL (DEMS MOCK)

PRES TRUMP'S FIRST JOINT CONGRESSIONAL ADDRESS MET WITH LOUD APPROVAL:

DEMOCRATS RESPOND WITH BITTER DIATRIBES & MOCKERY.


****** HIGHLIGHTS OF TRUMP'S SPEECH WERE:

REBUILDING US MILITARY

REBUILDING THE AMERICAN DREAM

FAKE NEWS & MEDIA PROPAGANDA

TRUE UNITY

ANTI-SEMITISM

DEFEATING ISIL

CIVIL RIGHTS & SCHOOL CHOICE

REPLACING OBAMACARE WITH REAL HEALTHCARE

PAID FAMILY LEAVE & AFFORDABLE CHILDCARE

BUILDING THE GREAT WALL TO SECURE OUR BORDERS


Sources: ABC News, Fox News, Washington Post, YouTube


~ President Trump Addresses The Joint Congress


President Donald Trump delivered his first address to a joint session of Congress Tuesday night, addressing a host of familiar themes from his campaign and calling for unity to address a litany of issues that he says are plaguing the country.

Trump's call for an end to the "pure unadulterated division" and "trivial fights" comes in the wake of a bruising campaign and a tumultuous start to his presidency, squaring off against critics as well as waging a pitched battle against the media. The speech also comes amid a flurry of questions about alleged contacts between Trump associates and suspected Russian officials, which the president has derided as "fake news."

The time for small thinking is over," Trump said. "The time for trivial fights is behind us. We just need the courage to share the dreams that fill our hearts. The bravery to express the hopes that stir our souls. And the confidence to turn those hopes and those dreams into action."

Trump began the address by condemning the recent threats against Jewish centers and a suspected hate crime in Kansas. The president had drawn fire for not immediately addressing the Jewish Community Center incidents and not making public comments about the fatal Kansas shooting until tonight's speech.

"Recent threats targeting Jewish community centers and vandalism of Jewish cemeteries as well as last week's shooting in Kansas City remind us that while we may be a nation divided on policies, we are a country that stands united in condemning hate and evil in all of its very ugly forms," Trump said.

One of the most emotional moments -- and possibly the longest standing ovation of the speech -- came when Trump praised Carryn Owens, the widow of Senior Chief William "Ryan" Owens who died in a raid in Yemen. The moment has been a political hot point since Owens' father Bill Owens and Sen. John McCain criticized the president's choice to execute the mission. but Trump used the speech to call it "a highly successful raid."

During the speech, Trump revisited what he called the movement that propelled him into the White House.

"In 2016, the earth shifted beneath our feet," he said. "The rebellion started as a quiet protest, spoken by families of all colors and creeds -– families who just wanted a fair shot for their children, and a fair hearing for their concerns. But then the quiet voices became a loud chorus -- as thousands of citizens now spoke out together, from cities small and large, all across our country."

"Above all else, we will keep our promises to the American people," Trump said.

Trump ran through a series of his biggest campaign promises during much of the speech, giving updates on what he and his team plan to do about them. He talked about how "we will soon begin the construction of a great, great wall along our southern border," and later talked about plans for "a new program of national rebuilding."

His call for Congress to repeal and replace Obamacare was met with one of the loudest responses, with Republicans standing while some Democrats were seen giving a thumbs down.

He made a push for unity later in the speech, saying that "everything that is broken in our country can be fixed."

"Every problem can be solved. And every hurting family can find healing, and hope. Our citizens deserve this, and so much more – so why not join forces and finally get the job done? And get it done right. On this and so many other things, Democrats and Republicans should get together and unite for the good of our country, and for the good of the American people," he said.

Trump touched on paid family leave, the need to make childcare more affordable, an effort to promote clean air and water -- all issues that his daughter Ivanka has reportedly championed -- as areas where Republicans and Democrats could work together, along with rebuilding the military and the country's infrastructure.

He went on to call education "the civil rights issue of our time" before asking Congress to fund an education bill that allows children school choice.

"Our children will grow up in a nation of miracles. But to achieve this future, we must enrich the mind – and the souls – of every American child," he said.

While Trump did talk about his administration's plans to build a "great, great" wall, a regular theme of his campaign, he did not talk about who would pay for it; he said regularly during the campaign that Mexico would pay for the wall and he has since wavered about when and by whom those payments would be made.

First Lady Melania Trump attended the speech along with hand-picked guests, including Maureen Scalia, the widow of late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Trump's eldest daughter, Ivanka, and her husband Jared Kushner, who is a senior advisor to the president, were also seated in the first lady's box.

A group of female House Democrats all chose to wear white in an act of support for women's rights. Their sartorial choice was particularly noticeable because they all sat together in the chamber.

On Monday, Trump's team sent out an email to supporters asking for their "input on the direction of our country" before what they called his State of the Union address.

The email called the speech "his biggest speech to date."

California Approves Statewide High Speed Rail Infrastructure Project: JOBS! JOBS! JOBS!

Lawmakers Vote to Move Ahead With California Rail Link

Despite deepening doubts about the cost and feasibility of a $70 billion high-speed rail proposed to cross California, the State Senate on Friday narrowly approved legislation to spend $8 billion in federal and state money to begin construction, starting with a 130-mile stretch through the rural Central Valley.

The vote came as the federal government threatened to withdraw $3.3 billion in financing for the 520-mile project if the Legislature did not approve the release of state bond money to begin construction. Democrats and Republicans expressed fear that the project could be remembered as a boondoggle passed when the state is struggling through a fiscal crisis.

Polls suggests that voters have turned against the project after voting for it in 2008. Several Democrats, in arguing against the expenditure, warned that voters would be less likely to approve a tax package on the ballot this fall that Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, said was necessary to avoid more cuts in spending on education and other programs.

The vote was a major victory for Mr. Brown, who had strongly urged lawmakers to approve the project, which eventually would link San Francisco to Los Angeles. He described it in keeping with the state’s tradition of grand projects and said it would pump money into the ailing economy. It was passed in the Senate with 21 votes, one more than was needed. The Assembly passed the measure on Thursday.

“How many chances do we have to vote for something this important and long-lasting?” said Darrell Steinberg, the Democratic president pro tem of the Senate.

Opposition cut across party lines. Speaker after speaker noted there was no source of revenue for the train line beyond the initial $8 billion, and that it was being built in rural California, far from where the bulk of the state’s population lived. Several noted the incongruity of embarking on such a major project weeks after passing a budget that included deep cuts in spending on schools and other programs.

“This is a colossal fiscal train wreck for California,” said Senator Tony Strickland, a Republican. “Members, this bill is spending money we simply don’t have here in California.”

Mr. Brown heralded the vote, saying, “The Legislature took bold action today that gets Californians back to work and puts California out in front once again.”


View Larger Map


Sources: CNN, LA Times, NY Times, PBS News, Youtube, Google Maps

Obama Urges More Investments In Infrastructure & Education (Weekly Address Video)

Weekly Address: Pushing Congress to Create Jobs, Keep College in Reach for Middle Class

President Obama discusses legislation he signed on Friday that does two important things: It keeps thousands of construction workers on the job rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, and it stops interest rates on federal loans from doubling this year for more than seven million students.


Sources: White House.gov, Youtube

Franklin D. Roosevelt & Obama On JOBS, Taxes & Social Security: "The New Deal" (Videos)

New Deal

The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call the "3 Rs": Relief, Recovery, and Reform. That is, Relief for the unemployed and poor; Recovery of the economy to normal levels; and Reform of the financial system to prevent a repeat depression. The New Deal produced a political realignment, making the Democratic Party the majority (as well as the party which held the White House for seven out of nine Presidential terms from 1933 to 1969), with its base in liberal ideas, big city machines, and newly empowered labor unions, ethnic minorities, and the white South. The Republicans were split, either opposing the entire New Deal as an enemy of business and growth, or accepting some of it and promising to make it more efficient. The realignment crystallized into the New Deal Coalition that dominated most American elections into the 1960s, while the opposition Conservative Coalition largely controlled Congress from 1938 to 1964.

Historians distinguish a "First New Deal" (1933) and a "Second New Deal" (1934–36). Some programs were declared unconstitutional, and others were repealed during World War II. The "First New Deal" (1933) dealt with diverse groups, from banking and railroads to industry and farming, all of which demanded help for economic recovery. A "Second New Deal" in 1934–36 included the Wagner Act to promote labor unions, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) relief program, the Social Security Act, and new programs to aid tenant farmers and migrant workers. The final major items of New Deal legislation were the creation of the United States Housing Authority and Farm Security Administration, both in 1937, then the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which set maximum hours and minimum wages for most categories of workers[1] and the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938.

Despite Roosevelt campaigning heavily against anti-New Deal Republicans and anti-New Deal Democrats, Republicans gained many seats in Congress in the 1938 midterm elections and the Democrats opponents of the New Deal retained their seats, resulting in the WPA, CCC and other relief programs being shut down during World War II by the Conservative Coalition (i.e., the opponents of the New Deal in Congress); they argued the return of full employment made them superfluous. As a Republican President in the 1950s, Dwight D. Eisenhower left the New Deal largely intact.

In the 1960s, Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society took New Deal policies further. After 1974, laissez faire views grew in support, calling for deregulation of the economy and ending New Deal regulation of transportation, banking and communications in the late 1970s and early 1980s.[3] Several New Deal programs remain active, with some still operating under the original names, including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation (FCIC), the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). The largest programs still in existence today are the Social Security System and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Sources: White House, Wikipedia, Youtube, Google Maps

Pres. Obama Urges Congress To Focus On Job Growth (Weekly Address)

Sources: White House, Youtube

GOP Plans Cap & Cut Vote; Stalls Infrastructure Jobs Bank Vote

Folks Isn't It Amazing How House GOP Leaders Are Focusing ALL Of Their Energy & Wasting Taxpayers' Money By Passing Stupid Bills Such As: Cut, Cap & Balance, Light Bulb Act Repeal, Defunding The EPA, etc., While Completely Ignoring Our Nation's High Unemployment Rate?

Excuse Me But Didn't Boehner, Cantor & Tea Party Candidates Run On JOBS! JOBS! JOBS! Back In November 2010??

However Instead Of Passing Useful Legislation To Help The American Electorate Recover Financially, Ex: Pres. Obama's Infrastructure Jobs Bank Bill Of Which Is Currently Sitting In Congress, Boehner & His Sidekick Cantor Are Filibustering It For The Sole Purpose Of Slowing Down Economic Growth On Pres. Obama's Watch.

Passage Of The Infrastructure Jobs Bank Bill Would Immediately Put More Than 2 Million Construction Workers Back On The Job.

What A Shame GOP Leaders Seem To Care More About Protecting Billionaires & Millionaires Than They Do Mainstreet!

How MEAN & SELFISH Can GOP Leaders Be??

Don't They Care Anything At All About The American Electorate??

So Boehner, Cantor & Those Radical, Extremely Selfish Tea Party Congress Members Were Sent To Capitol Hill To Slow Down The American Economy Just To Get Rid Of Pres. Obama Versus Passing Legislation To Help Create JOBS???

BULL!!!

I Say Its Time To Send Boehner, Cantor & Those Radical, Extremely Selfish Tea Party Congress Members Home For Good!!

They Need To Be Replaced With Democrats & Independent Congress Members Who Actually CARE About The Well Being Of Their Constituents!!

VOTE OBAMA & REHIRE PELOSI IN 2012!!!!








House Republicans Plan Vote on Deficit

With budget negotiations with the White House stalled, Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio said Friday that the House would vote next week on a three-part plan to cut the deficit, cap federal spending as a share of the economy and amend the Constitution to require a balanced budget.

The plan, which has a companion in the Senate, would represent the House position in the final stages of the debate as the federal government nears the limit of its borrowing power. While it would not appear to have a chance of passing the Democrat-controlled Senate, and President Obama is opposed, it could provide a legislative avenue to increasing the debt limit as it makes it way through Congress.

The House Republican leader, Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, said the House would move on its own because the president’s deficit-reduction proposals fell far short of what was needed.

In the budget blueprint passed by the House this year, Mr. Cantor said, “We sought $6.2 trillion in cuts over 10 years.’’ By contrast, he said, in debt negotiations at the White House this week, “the president and Democrats have offered perhaps $1.5 trillion of savings.’’

Mr. Cantor pushed back against Democratic complaints that the Republicans had not offered any concessions, but he said the Republicans would not permit federal spending to continue on its current trajectory.

“We are not going to allow this kind of spending to continue,’’ Mr. Cantor said. “We don’t have the money.’’

Mr. Boehner left the door open to the compromise plan floated by the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who has described his proposal as a last-ditch option. It would call for Congress to vote on whether or not to disapprove a debt limit increase, an approach that could avoid a government default by allowing Republicans to register their disapproval of the increase but still allowing it to pass.

“We are far from the time for a last-ditch effort,’’ Mr. Boehner said, signaling that Congress still had many days and perhaps weeks of work to do on the debt.






View Larger Map

Sources: CNN, Fox News, NY Times, White House, Youtube, Google Maps

GOP's Dirty Media Attacks & Job Killing Filibusters: Decision 2012

"Unless he can re-create momentum,Democrats are looking at a bloodbath in 2010." And a whole new ballgame in 2012".

Considering Its Field Of BORING, Lackluster 2012 Presidential Candidates, How Does The GOP Plan To Whip Barack Obama In 2012?

By Waging An All Out Dirty Media Attack & Increasing The Amount Of GOP-Backed Congressional Filibusters.

I'd Say Its Time For Pres. Obama, Democrats & Independents To WAKE UP, Fight Back & Defend Their Progressive Agenda!

And Since Republicans Are NOT Focused On JOBS, Its Also Time For Democrats & Independent Political Leaders, (Including Activists) To Begin Focusing More On JOBS, JOBS, JOBS.

Infrastructure Jobs, Green Energy Jobs, Clean Energy Jobs, WPA Jobs, etc.,

JOBS!!

If GOP Leaders Continue To NOT Work With Pres. Obama By Blocking ALL Of His Jobs Initiatives, Then Pres. Obama Must Find A Way To Use His Executive Authority To Do So.

Because JOBS Equals Money, Consumer Spending & Fixing The Economy.

Republicans Are Aware Of The Positive Results A Strong Job Market Creates, Which Is Why They Insist On Opposing Pres. Obama's Jobs' Programs Initiatives.

Even If Opposing Such Programs Means Destroying The Entire American Economy!

What A Shame!

And Yet Many Republicans Call Themselves "Christians" & "Followers Of God"!

I'd Say Its More Like Racist, Selfish HYPOCRITES Wouldn't You??

Yes! Its ALL About Creating Jobs, Creating More Revenue, Saving College Funding (NOT For-Profit Schools Scams), Fixing Medicare & Social Security.

NOT Allowing More Tax Cuts For The Wealthy!

Not Sending More JOBS Overseas!

Not Killing Medicare & Social Security!!

Not Eliminating College Student Aid, Except When Dealing With Crooked, Greedy For-Profit Schools!

Let's Get On With It Democrats & Independents!

We Have An Economy To Save & Another Presidential Election To Win!!

VOTE OBAMA IN 2012!!!






The GOP's Dirty War

Only a year ago, the Republican Party had been given up for dead. Top GOP strategists despaired that their party — decimated by two consecutive bloodbath elections — was leaderless, dominated by Southern conservatives and lurching rightward into irrelevance. "The Republican Party seems to be slipping into a position of being more of a regional party," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell warned his colleagues. "In politics, there's a name for a regional party: It's called a minority party."

As the embittered remains of the GOP caucus locked arms against President Obama and a stimulus plan designed to put Americans back to work, the Party of No seemed no match for Yes We Can. Stuart Rothenberg, one of the Beltway's top handicappers, derided as "lunacy" the boast last April by Rep. Eric Cantor — architect of the Republican strategy of obstruction — that the GOP would soon return to power. "The chance of Republicans winning control of either chamber in the 2010 midterm elections is zero," Rothenberg declared. "Not 'close to zero.' Not 'slight' or 'small.' Zero."

What a difference a year makes: Visions of a generation of Democratic dominance have been eclipsed by a brutal economy and the party's internal gridlock. Despite the $787 billion stimulus, unemployment remains stuck in double digits. Health care reform — Obama's centerpiece legislation — has jumped the rails, and every day spent seeking to get it back on track is a day not focused on the economy, stupid. "Barack Obama spent seven months talking about something other than the most important issue to voters: jobs and wages," says party strategist Simon Rosenberg. "Democrats left the door open for the Republicans."

As a result, the GOP is poised to take back the House in November. There are 59 congressional seats in play, and 53 of them belong to Democrats. "We are seeing 28 to 38 Democratic losses, and it's getting worse," says Charlie Cook, a top political forecaster. "Right now the trajectory is going over 40" — the number of GOP pickups required to flip the House. Even in the Senate, all bets are off following the election of Tea Party darling Scott Brown in Massachusetts and the unexpected retirements of red-state Democrats Byron Dorgan of North Dakota and Evan Bayh of Indiana. "Democrats are demoralized, and independents think we're incapable of governing," says Markos Moulitsas, founder of the progressive political forum DailyKos. "We're going to get punished."

The GOP's resurrection has not come on the strength of transformative ideas that can actually solve the nation's problems: Republicans continue to peddle warmed-over Bush — from bankruptcy-inducing tax cuts to the privatization of Social Security. Instead, it has been achieved through what one party strategist admits is "tactical small-ball." The GOP game is as simple as it is hypocritical. First: Reject every Democratic proposal — including some of the exact same initiatives that Republicans championed under Bush — while branding the consensus-seeking Obama as a radical leftist. Second: Stoke populist fury over exploding deficits, even though they're the fallout of eight catastrophic years of Republican rule. (President Bush inherited a projected surplus of $5.6 trillion and left behind a forecasted deficit of $3 trillion.) Three: Promise to fix what's wrong with Washington — despite having waged an all-out war to make government appear as broken as possible.

It has come to this: The unreconstructed party of Jack Abramoff and Dick Cheney is now making the cynical bet that it can win a "change election" of its own this year by drafting a new "Contract With America," focused on initiatives for "good governance" and accountability. And come November, that bet might just pay off. "Does the Republican Party lack a clear leader? Absolutely. Do they lack a positive message? Of course. Do their demographics suck? Yeah," says Cook. "But in a midterm election, none of that matters. Because midterm elections are a referendum on the party in power. And to throw one side out, you've got to throw the other side back in."

The stage for the GOP's devolution into the Party of No was set by a power struggle in January 2009 between House Minority Leader John Boehner and insurgent minority whip Eric Cantor. Boehner, a 10-term Republican from Ohio who took part in Newt Gingrich's insurrection against Bill Clinton, had angered his party's right-wing base by seeking common ground with Democrats over the TARP bailout. "Boehner's leadership position was in jeopardy," recalls Republican strategist Ed Rollins. "Some of the hardcore conservatives in the caucus thought he was too much of a compromiser." That opened the door for the more hardline Cantor to seize Boehner's power, if not his title — a reality that President Obama himself recognized by singling out the House whip as his negotiating partner during a "fiscal-responsibility summit" with GOP leaders. "I'm a glutton for punishment," Obama joked. "I'm gonna keep talking to Eric Cantor. Sooner or later, he's gonna say, 'Boy, Obama had a good idea.'"

Don't hold your breath. Under Cantor's leadership, House Republicans have pursued a strategy of blanket obstructionism. In addition to stonewalling health care, climate legislation and Wall Street regulation, they have repeatedly voted against the conservative principles they profess to uphold. They lined up unanimously against the stimulus package, even though it included the largest tax cut in history. In February, they tried to block pay-as-you-go budget rules — long a goal of deficit hawks — that would force the government to make spending cuts to pay for any new federal initiatives. And Republicans in the Senate rejected Obama's efforts to create a bipartisan deficit commission — even though it was virtually identical to a plan introduced under Bush. The knee-jerk partisanship has reached absurd heights. Despite railing against Obama's "jobless recovery," not a single Republican voted for the $154 billion jobs package the House passed in December.

At heart, the Republican obstructionism is not only hypocritical, it's perversely cynical. Blocking the president, after all, will only pay political dividends if the country continues to fall apart. The GOP's political thinking, Cook says, is simple: "If President Obama and Democrats do well, we Republicans are screwed. But if they screw up, then we're going to be standing there ready to be the beneficiary." What's most surprising is that Republicans in the Senate have gone along with the just-say-no strategy laid out by Cantor. "Historically, Republicans have been unable to act as a true Senate opposition party," says Rollins, "because there have always been some moderates willing to make deals with Democrats."

Obama was counting on that history as a linchpin of his legislative strategy. In his administration's first days, he persuaded senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins — GOP moderates who represent Maine, which voted for Obama by a margin of 58-40 — to cross the aisle and vote for his stimulus plan. Then, in what appeared to be the ultimate sign of the GOP's death spiral, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania unexpectedly switched parties, giving the administration a filibuster-proof supermajority.

But in a counterintuitive twist, Specter's defection actually ended up benefiting Republicans. With Democrats firmly in control of the Senate, moderates like Snowe and Collins had few incentives to cooperate with the president, knowing they would no longer be blamed by voters if his agenda failed. Worse, Obama further alienated them during the health care debate by refusing to explicitly back any of the myriad bills up for consideration. "The White House kept saying, 'We're going to be happy with whatever ends up coming our way,'" says Steve Clemons, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and a former top Senate staffer. "That's not going to work with people who are going to be walking the plank with you. I know that was the case for Snowe. There was no reason to leave herself politically vulnerable until Democrats were able to pull all of their votes together."

Despite having a supermajority in his back pocket, the president continued to seek bipartisan support for health care reform. "Obama thought bipartisanship would be a way to convince independent voters to keep faith in him," says Clemons. "But Republicans in Congress read it as weakness." Mike Enzi of Wyoming and Chuck Grassley of Iowa took advantage of Obama's stance by making a show of working with Democrats to reach a compromise — a process that tied up the Senate Finance Committee for months — only to reveal that their true motivation had been to delay passage of the bill. Grassley, who last June hailed what he called "a bipartisan consensus to have individual mandates," used the president's health care summit in February as an opportunity to rail against "unconstitutional" mandates. A week earlier, Enzi boasted to a group of businessmen, "If I hadn't been a part of the debate, you would already have universal health care."

The holy grail in any election is winning the support of the one-third of the electorate that considers itself independent. During the Clinton era, the GOP strategy was to sway these voters by making character attacks on the president — a mistake that cost Republicans five seats in the House during the impeachment battle of 1998 and ultimately led to Newt Gingrich being stripped of his speakership. So the current GOP leadership has taken the focus off Obama himself, using inflammatory language like "death panels" and "government takeover" to misleadingly brand his policies as extreme leftist. "Why would you get into a fight with Obama," asks Grover Norquist, one of the founding fathers of the conservative movement, "when you can get into a fight with his spending, with the bailouts, with the health care takeover, with the taxes on energy?"

Obama's decision to take a hands-off approach to Congress also enabled Republicans to shift the focus from a popular president to less-loved Democrats. "It's Reid and Pelosi's stimulus package, Reid and Pelosi's health care bill, Reid and Pelosi's taxes on energy," says Norquist. If Democratic policies were a martini, he says, "Obama is the vermouth — he's barely there."

With the president refusing to direct his own legislation, Congress yielded to its worst instincts. House Democrats loaded up early versions of the stimulus package with a laundry list of funding for pet projects, from hybrid cars to the National Endowment for the Arts, enabling Republicans to paint the plan as pork-barrel politics. And to pass health care reform in the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid was forced to resort to what one Democratic insider calls "some of the whoriest deals that Washington has ever seen," handing over $300 million in Medicaid funding for Louisiana to secure the vote of Sen. Mary Landrieu, and another $100 million for Nebraska to get Sen. Ben Nelson on board.

"Obama wasn't hammering Democrats to behave with individual interventions," says an insider close to the negotiations. "He also wasn't working very hard to create fissures and fractures in the Republican Party at the level that should be possible." Rather than twisting arms like LBJ, the president and his supposed all-star team of advisers, anchored by Rahm Emanuel, came across like a bunch of rookies. "It's bizarre that Obama could be so politically weak that Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman could kick the White House around," says Clemons, "rather than the White House kicking them around."

Republicans have taken advantage of the infighting by using the Senate's baroque parliamentary rules to throw down as many procedural impediments to legislation as possible. Directing the obstructionism is McConnell, the Senate minority leader. A jowly Kentuckian renowned for his skill at inserting pork projects into legislation, McConnell spearheaded the opposition to campaign finance reform that ended in the recent Supreme Court decision allowing unlimited corporate spending in American elections. "McConnell has always been the tactician," says Rollins.

"He knows how to tie up the Senate." In a dramatic break from precedent, McConnell has subjected even the most routine Senate business to the 60-vote threshold required to break a filibuster — a move traditionally used only in dire policy disputes. McConnell began his obstructionism after Democrats took control of the Senate in 2007, forcing a record 139 "cloture" votes to defeat the filibuster — more than double the 68 cloture votes in the previous Congress.

The Senate is now on track to eclipse even that record, with Republicans forcing more filibuster votes last year alone than the Senate cast in the decades of the 1950s and 1960s combined. "I've never seen the Constitution stood on its head, as they've done," Vice President Biden said in January. "This is the first time every single solitary decision has required 60 senators."

Republicans are using the filibuster not only to delay legislation they genuinely oppose, but as part of a broader strategy to stall Democrats on other initiatives. Last fall, GOP leaders forced Democrats to overcome a pair of filibusters to extend unemployment benefits. "There was no opposition to the bill," observed Sen. Bayh, who noted that the measure passed by a margin of 98-0. "But some senators saw political advantage in drawing out debate, thus preventing the Senate from addressing other pressing matters."

The GOP has also used parliamentary chicanery to prevent Obama from filling key roles in his administration. Under Senate rules, a single senator can anonymously block a vote on a White House nominee by using what's known as a "hold." "It's a policy that is easily abused," says former Bush adviser David Frum — and Republicans have proved themselves eager to abuse it, even at the expense of national security. After the attempted Christmas Day airline bombing, Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina continued to block a vote on the chief of the Transportation Security Administration because he didn't like the nominee's pro-union politics. In February, Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama placed a blanket hold on more than 70 nominees — including three high-level Pentagon officials — in a stunt designed to steer more military pork projects to his state. The GOP's willingness to gum up the works is unprecedented: While Bush ended his first year with just 70 appointees awaiting confirmation, more than 200 of Obama's nominees are still in Senate limbo.

By voting en masse against the president's initiatives, Republicans now have the luxury of casting everything as Obama's fault — even if it requires distorting the president's record. Democrats, they argue, are hurting average Americans. "The economy is worse for having done the stimulus," says Norquist. "It's not that it helped a little bit. It didn't help at all!" The GOP, he insists, can make the same argument on health care: "There's nothing in the health care bill that's any good at all. It's all taxes and transfers of income. There's nothing in there that reduces the costs of health care for anybody."

In reality, both assertions are demonstrably wrong. The stimulus has created 2 million jobs in its first year, according to the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office, and the Democratic health care plan will save taxpayers $104 billion over 10 years. But Republicans aren't letting the reality-based virtues of Obama's initiatives stand in their way. To distract voters, they have unleashed an all-out campaign to demonize the president's agenda. Dick Armey, the former House majority leader, played a lead role in instigating the Tea Partiers — a nearly all-white movement that has cast the president as a socialist, Kenyan-born tyrant intent on bankrupting America and euthanizing the elderly. The Tea Party's most extreme rhetoric has often been fanned by top Republicans in both the House and Senate. Last July, long before Sarah Palin coined the phrase "death panels," Boehner warned that Obama's health care plan would lead America "down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia." Grassley, one of the chief GOP negotiators on the bill, claimed that under "government-run health care" the ailing Ted Kennedy would have been denied care for his brain tumor by federal bean counters who would "pull the tubes." The rhetoric was as hypocritical as it was dishonest: Both Boehner and Grassley had previously voted to provide government-funded, end-of-life counseling for terminal patients as part of the GOP's Medicare expansion in 2003.

The Republicans' grotesque distortions of Obama's record have become a matter of dogma for the GOP's new grass-roots base. A recent poll found that only two percent of Tea Partiers are aware that the president enacted the largest middle-class tax cut in history. A staggering 44 percent, by contrast, believe that Obama has increased their taxes — and only 16 percent blame the current economic catastrophe on Bush, who ran up record deficits by slashing taxes for the wealthy.

The Tea Party's fight-the-power theatrics have also helped Republicans obscure the fact that the few alternatives they have bothered to offer to President Obama's policies are a repeat of the Bush-league economics that cater to Wall Street banks and hedge-fund billionaires. The GOP attacked Democrats for the size of the stimulus, for example, arguing that anything the government did be "timely, temporary and targeted."

But the Republican alternative — a Rovian package of permanent tax cuts for big corporations and the wealthiest Americans — carried a 10-year price tag of more than $3 trillion. And the GOP alternative to health care — a mix of deregulation and health-savings accounts — would leave the share of Americans without insurance unchanged at 17 percent.

Rep. Paul Ryan — a former speechwriter for drug czar Bill Bennet — has been hailed as the GOP's new policy wonk. "Paul Ryan is offering policy alternatives so the Republican Party isn't just a Party of No," says Frank Luntz, the strategist who advised the GOP to frame Obama's reform effort as a "Washington takeover of health care." With a hairstyle that looks like a plastic Reagan wig purchased at a novelty store, Ryan clearly aspires to be seen as a throwback to the Gipper. But the policies he's promoting are pure Dubya. Despite Wall Street's catastrophic collapse, Ryan continues to call for scrapping Social Security and replacing it with private accounts. And the 2011 budget he proposed would dismantle Medicare and provide seniors with "vouchers" that would cover only a fraction of their medical costs. "There is no new thinking there," says Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia. "The 'new' ideas are nothing but a conservative retread."

But the GOP knows that it doesn't need to inspire voters — it just needs to inspire their discontent with Democrats. And Republicans are now poised to reap the benefits of a wave of anger over the very dysfunction in Washington that they have so skillfully aggravated. Polls show that 86 percent of voters now describe the political system as "broken," and the discontent is rising fastest among rural Americans and the country's highest wage earners — sweet spots for the GOP. "A lot of people who voted for Barack Obama are gonna come to the polls in November," says Luntz. "They're not going to vote against Obama or against the Democrats. They're going to vote against Washington, and all those things that Washington represents."

To challenge vulnerable Democrats, the GOP plans to co-opt the campaign strategy that ushered Obama into the White House. First, Republicans are actively recruiting younger candidates in the Scott Brown mold, men and women in their 30s and 40s who can create what Luntz calls "a sense of a new beginning for the GOP." Second, in a throwback to 1994, the party is drafting a new Contract With America, one that echoes the calls for greater government transparency that Obama championed. According to one strategist familiar with the manifesto, the document is designed to help cast the party — tarnished by years of blatant corruption and reckless spending — as above the backroom deals that marked both the stimulus plan and health care reform.

"The GOP is in better shape now than it was in 1994 at this time," says Luntz. "That's what's incredible about what has happened. The best presidential communicator in a generation — and Obama is better than Clinton — has allowed his opponents to get back up, brush themselves off and provide an alternative vision. The Republican Party is like Jason in Friday the 13th — you can't kill it. It will not die."

If anything is going to trip up the GOP, it may be Republicans themselves. The party's own strategists worry that the alliance with the combustible Tea Party may backfire during the GOP primaries, where even Republican stalwarts like John McCain now face stiff opposition from far-right candidates who are unlikely to fare well among the general electorate. "The most important impact of the Tea Party," warns Frum, "may be to saddle the Republican Party with less-electable candidates." Even more damaging is the likelihood that the Tea Party could begin acting as a true third party, siphoning off votes from the GOP. "If we fractionalize the Republican Party," Sen. Orrin Hatch warned Tea Party activists in February, "we are going to see more liberals elected."

Others are betting that Republicans have peaked too early. The stimulus plan is finally starting to pay economic dividends, and Democrats are gearing up to hammer Republicans for opposing it from now until Election Day. Even some GOP senators believe Republicans have overplayed the obstructionist tactics that have fueled the party's resurgence. In January, Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio slammed McConnell for voting against the exact same deficit commission he had previously endorsed as the "best way" to curb federal debt. "Why is he backing off?" Voinovich asked. "If the public perceives that the Republican Party is playing political games whose main goal is to see how many more Republicans we can get in the Senate and the House, and the public interest be damned — it's going to backfire."

According to Rollins, the election of Scott Brown may actually help Democrats. "They've been woken up early," he says. With eight months to go before the midterm elections — "a lifetime in politics" — the Democrats have the largest majority in the Senate that either party has enjoyed since the 1970s. "Democrats need to ask themselves, 'What can we do with our own side?' and not worry about the other side," advises Rollins. "They've got to put something on the board."

To do that, strategists from both parties agree, Obama must stop acting like the negotiator in chief and channel his inner Dick Cheney. That means setting a clear and uncompromising agenda, and empowering his staff and Cabinet secretaries to go out and fight for it. Even within the administration, Clemons says, "nobody really knows where he's at. He's made his own views opaque. And a lot of stuff that people thought he was going to deliver on he's moved away from, tempered or put on hold."

The White House seems to have gotten the message. In January, the president ordered his former campaign czar, David Plouffe, to step up his role in the midterm elections, placing a long-overdue emphasis on grass-roots mobilizing. Obama has also decided to stop outsourcing so much responsibility to Congress. "It was clear that too often we didn't have the ball," a White House spokesman admitted recently. "In 2010, the president will constantly be doing high-profile things to be the person driving the narrative."

Obama finally drafted his own version of the health care bill — one that strips the $100 million payoff for Ben Nelson — and Democrats appear ready to use a filibuster-proof process known as budget reconciliation to approve the measure with a simple majority. "We're going to pass a bill," a senior aide to the Democratic leadership predicts, "and we're going to have several months to talk about its benefits before the elections in November."

The stakes couldn't be higher. The battle in the weeks ahead will reveal what kind of president Barack Obama has it in him to become. Will he be a transformative figure like Reagan? An incrementalist like Clinton? Or a hapless one-termer like Carter? Most Americans are betting Carter: Only 44 percent say Obama deserves re-election. "Unless he can re-create momentum," says Clemons, "Democrats are looking at a bloodbath in 2010." And a whole new ballgame in 2012".


View Larger Map


Sources: Fox News, MSNBC, Rolling Stone, Young Turks, Youtube, Google Maps

Pres. Obama Signs HIRE Act Jobs Bill Into Law

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Obama Signs Multi-Billion-Dollar Bill To Create Jobs


President Barack Obama offered hope Thursday that a growing US economy may soon bring more jobs, as indicators pointed to a still-fragile recovery from the "great recession."

Signing into law a 17.6-billion-dollar measure designed to boost hiring, Obama said the economy was "beginning to move in the right direction," but admitted ordinary Americans were still bearing too great a burden from the economic crisis.

"Our economy is growing again and we may soon be adding jobs instead of losing them, the jobs bill I?m signing today is intended to help accelerate this process," Obama said in a signing ceremony in the White House Rose Garden.

Addressing employers who have been slow to create jobs amid continued economic uncertainty, Obama said: "If you hire a worker who?s unemployed, you won't have to pay payroll taxes on that worker for the rest of the year."

The legislation also includes infrastructure investments for items like highway construction and help for states to build schools.

As US unemployment levels hover near double digits, the White House has struggled to claw back some of the estimated eight million jobs that have been lost since the economy entered recession in December 2007.

On Thursday, the Labor Department reported new claims for unemployment insurance benefits dipped only marginally last week, with 457,000 Americans beginning to ask the government for help, down 5,000 from the previous week.

According to Ryan Sweet, a senior economist with Moody's Economy.com, employment is trending in the right direction, but the slow speed of change is "dashing any expectation that jobs will roar back."

For the Obama administration, speeding that recovery has become all the more urgent as the country faces midterm elections in November that will decide whether the president's Democratic Party keeps control of Congress.

But with the unemployment rate not expected to ease quickly, Obama and his treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, have begun to focus on more modest indications of recovery -- pointing to increased hours put in by workers and firms shifting employees to a full-time schedule.

Geithner earlier this week said more than 100,000 new jobs would need to be created each month in order to dent the unemployment rate.

"It's about explaining to people that you are not going to take unemployment from 10.1 percent back to the good old days of five percent quickly," said Ted Gayer, co-director of economic studies at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

The midterm elections are also making it more difficult for Obama to pass more sweeping measures to spur employment.

Thursday's jobs bill that emerged from the poisoned political atmosphere in Congress is much smaller than some advocates had hoped, and Obama is pushing for more packages to spur job creation in the private sector.

The bill passed the Senate in a 68-29 vote, drawing support from 11 Republicans.

"I hope it is a prelude to further cooperation in the days and months to come, as we continue the work of digging out of this recession and rebuilding our economy in a way that works for all Americans," Obama said.

Sources: MSNBC, Yahoo News

Obama's $8B Infrastructure Jobs Project: High Speed Rail

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Inside Obama's Plan To Spend $8 Billion On High-Speed Rail


High-speed rail projects in California, Florida and Illinois are among the big winners of $8 billion in grants announced Thursday by the White House -- the start of what some Democrats tout as a national rail-building program that could rival the interstate highways begun in the Eisenhower era.

President Barack Obama announced the awards during a town hall meeting in Tampa, Fla. -- a follow-up to Wednesday's State of the Union address that focused on getting Americans back to work. Thirteen passenger rail corridors in 31 states will receive grants, which are funded by the economic recovery act enacted last year.

Obama said focusing on building 21st Century Infrastructure projects is an important element of the country's Economic Recovery.

"It creates jobs immediately and it lays the foundation for a vibrant economy in the future," Obama said.

Though the administration bills the program as "high-speed rail," most U.S. projects won't reach the speeds seen in Europe and Asia. California's trains would be by far the fastest, exceeding the 200 mph achieved by some trains overseas.

Some of the money will go toward trains with top speeds of 110 mph, while other funds -- such as the $400 million allotted to Ohio to connect Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton and Cincinnati -- will be for trains traveling no faster than 79 mph.

A half-dozen Cabinet members and other senior administration officials were fanning out across the country for rail events Thursday and Friday. The White House said rail projects will create or save thousands of jobs in areas including track laying, manufacturing, planning, engineering and rail maintenance and operations.

Obama told the crowd at Thursday's town hall that when the high-speed rail line connecting Tampa and Orlando is finished, "I'm going to come back down here and ride it."

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and members of Congress have acknowledged they expect much of the expertise and equipment to be supplied by foreign companies. Except for Amtrak's Acela line between Boston and Washington, there are no high-speed trains in the U.S. and no domestic high-speed rail industry.

The $8 billion investment is just a start. Last year, Obama asked Congress in his budget request for an additional $1 billion a year for five years. Congress for this year approved another $2.5 billion that remains to be awarded. And Obama is expected to ask for yet more rail funds when his budget is presented next week.

Also, LaHood has hinted that some of the $1.5 billion allotted in the stimulus plan for discretionary transportation projects may go toward high-speed rail.

Japan launched the first high-speed trains in 1964, and France and other European countries followed in the 1980s and 1990s. China has announced plans to expand its high-speed rail system to a network of more than 16,000 miles by the year 2020 at an estimated cost of $300 billion.

In the U.S., only the projects in California and Florida are planned to reach maximum speeds of 150 mph or more, what most transportation experts consider high-speed rail.

Projects awarded the largest grants include:

• California: $2.3 billion to begin work on an 800-mile-long, high-speed rail line tying Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay area to Los Angeles and San Diego.

• Florida: $1.25 billion to build a rail line connecting Tampa on the West Coast with Orlando in the middle of the state, eventually going south to Miami.

• Illinois-Missouri: $1.1 billion to improve a rail line between Chicago and St. Louis so that trains travel up to 110 mph.

• Wisconsin: $810 million to upgrade and refurbish train stations and install safety equipment on the Madison-to-Milwaukee leg of a line that stretches from Minneapolis to Chicago.

• Washington-Oregon: $590 million to upgrade a rail line from Seattle to Portland, Ore.

• North Carolina: $520 million for projects that will increase top speeds to 90 mph on trains between Raleigh and Charlotte and double the number of round trips.

By spreading the $8 billion among so many states, Obama is ignoring the advice of transportation experts and high-speed rail advocates who said the best way to build continuing political support for the program would be to concentrate on two or three grants large enough to get a high-speed line up and running. Once that happens, they reasoned, other parts of the country would lobby for more money to build their own lines.

Rep. John Mica of Florida, the senior Republican on the House transportation committee, complained that the Midwest lines awarded grants will achieve top speeds of only 110 mph and were "selected more for political reasons than for high-speed service."


View Larger Map

Sources: Huffington Post, MSNBC, WRAL, Google Maps

Pundits Rate Pres. Obama's Jobs "Bail Out" Plan...No Price Tag

President Obama unveils Jobs plan, no price tag


President Barack Obama laid out a slate of job-creating ideas in a speech at the Brookings Institution Tuesday – a sort of “stimulus lite” — but carefully avoided saying how much the new plans would cost.

Obama touted the success of his stimulus and economic recovery efforts so far this year and endorsed a series of new ideas, including tax cuts for small business, new infrastructure spending on highways, rail and other projects, and a so-called “cash for caulkers” program that would give rebates to people who retrofit their homes to be more energy efficient.

Obama’s remarks represent a sort of political doubling down on the idea of federal stimulus spending. Indeed many of the ideas he mentioned are extensions of or additional funding for, items that were included in his $787 billion stimulus package earlier in the year.

It comes at a moment in which Republicans have been gaining political traction with the voter anger over bailouts and deficits in Washington. And Obama’s speech comes as he prepares to host Democratic and Republican leaders from both chambers of Congress at the White House Wednesday to discuss jobs and the economy, two sources familiar with the meeting told POLITICO. The meeting is scheduled for 11 a.m. and is expected to last 50 minutes.

“Our work is far from done,” Obama said. “For even though we have reduced the deluge of job losses to a relative trickle, we are not yet creating jobs at a pace to help all those families who have been swept up in the flood.”

Obama called the more than 7 million Americans who have lost their jobs since the recession began a “staggering figure” and a “continuing human tragedy.”

“It speaks to an urgent need to accelerate job growth in the short term while laying a new foundation for lasting economic growth,” he said.

But the president did not say how much all this will cost.

Instead, he sought to remind voters about how dire the economic picture was when he took office, reminiscing about briefings he got from his economic team soon after he was elected. And he joked about the scale of the problem that landed on his plate: “Having concluded that it was too late to request a recount,” he said, “I tasked my team with mapping out a plan to tackle the crisis on all fronts.”

In a conference call with reporters before the speech, senior administration officials also avoided offering any specific price tag for the new effort. The official said the reduced cost of bank bailouts gives them as much as $200 billion in additional “fiscal room” for spending and reducing the projected deficit, which was calculated assuming that the government would spend the entire $700 billion allocated to TARP.

The only detail on the financial wallop of the president’s plan today came from a senior administration official who said that the president’s ideas on infrastructure would cost “in the range of $50 billion,” meaning the total cost of the jobs package would likely be multiples of that amount.

Obama’s comments met with harsh criticism from Republicans on Capitol Hill. “Now, with unemployment at 10 percent, the President proposes another special interest slush fund using ‘savings’ from the TARP program. This is absurd,’ said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas). “TARP should be shut down as soon as possible and any unused funds should be returned to taxpayers by reducing our $1.4 trillion deficit.”

The White House said the president has a variety of ideas in each category, including five different proposals to help small businesses. “It is so important that we help small business struggling to open, or stay open, during these difficult times.” Obama is calling for a one-year elimination of the tax on capital gains from new investments in small business stock, and the extension of a stimulus bill provision that allows small businesses to immediately expense up to $250,000 of qualified investment.

And the president would like to see another provision extended that accelerates the rate at which business can deduct the cost of capital expenditures. Obama also proposed a short-term tax incentive to encourage small business hiring and eliminating fees for businesses that take Small Business Administration loans in 2010.

Within the infrastructure category, Obama called for spending on highways, transit, rail, aviation and water. “These are needed public works that engage private sector companies, spurring hiring across the country,” Obama said. He also said that the first stimulus bill – known as the Recovery Act – is just hitting its stride going into 2010. “What this means is that we’re going to see even more work – and workers – on Recovery projects in the next six months than we saw in the last six months,” Obama said.

And within the clean energy category, Obama said he would like to see rebates for consumers who make energy efficiency retrofits – which has become known as “cash for caulkers.” That plan, he said, “creates jobs, saves money for families, and reduces the pollution that threatens our environment.”

Obama said that even as he announces plans for new spending, he is striving to be fiscally responsible. He took the opportunity to remind voters how high the deficit was when he was inaugurated -- $1.3 trillion. “And I’d note: these budget busting tax cuts and spending programs were approved by many of the same people who are now waxing political about fiscal responsibility while opposing our efforts to reduce deficits by getting health care costs under control,” Obama said. “It’s a sight to see.”



View Larger Map


Sources: Politico, Google Maps

Pres. Obama Spells Out Jobs "Bail Out" Program (Infrastructure)...2nd Stimulus Plan

Highlights from Pres. Obama's Jobs "Bail Out" Speech.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

US Commerce Secretary discusses Pres. Obama's Jobs "Bail Out" plan.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

President Obama outlines measures that will "generate the greatest number of jobs" and stimulate the economy.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Pres. Obama outlines bailout for Main Street


President Barack Obama outlined new mult-ibillion-dollar Stimulus and Jobs proposals Tuesday, saying the nation must continue to "spend our way out of this recession" until more Americans are back at work.

Without giving a price tag, Obama proposed a package of new spending for highway, bridge and other infrastructure projects, deeper tax breaks for small businesses and tax incentives to encourage people to make their homes more energy efficient.

"We avoided the depression many feared," Obama said in a speech at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. But, he added, "Our work is far from done."

For the third time in a week, Obama sought to focus on job creation, noting that the unemployment rate was still at 10 percent in November, though down slightly from its 10.2 percent peak. He said "a staggering" 7 million Americans have lost jobs since the recession began two years ago.

While his proposal did not include the kind of direct federal public works jobs that were created in the 1930s, he said government could set the stage for more job creation by private businesses.

A major part of his package is new incentives for small businesses, which account for two-thirds of the nation's work force. He proposed a new tax cut for small businesses that hire in 2010 and an elimination for one year of the capital gains tax on profits from small-business investments.

Obama also proposed an elimination of fees on loans to small businesses, coupled with federal guarantees of those loans through the end of next year.

He called for more government spending on infrastructure projects such as roads, bridges and water projects and for new tax breaks for consumers who invest in energy-efficient retrofits in their homes. This could be what some administration officials have called a "Cash for Caulkers" program modeled on the now-expired Cash for Clunkers program of tax rebates for people who turned in old cars for more fuel-efficient models.

The administration also is eyeing ways to get money still not spent in the $787 billion stimulus bill passed last winter into projects more quickly.

Obama did not characterize his new proposals as another stimulus program like that mammoth measure, but Republican critics have called it just that and have said it will increase a federal deficit that is already at a record level.

Obama included sharp criticism for Republicans in his speech, accusing them of opposing economic stimulus efforts and his health care overhaul while supporting tax cuts and spending that have ballooned the deficit.

He said that soon after taking office, he and congressional Democrats took "a series of difficult steps" to try to stabilize the financial system and pull the economy out of a deep recession.

"And we were forced to take those steps largely without the help of an opposition party which, unfortunately, after having presided over the decision-making that led to the crisis, decided to hand it to others to solve."

Obama did not say how much his proposals would cost, although congressional Democrats are eyeing a $70 billion package to help create jobs and to provide aid to hard-pressed state and local governments. Administration aides suggested that the part of the package dealing with roads, bridges and other infrastructure could total about $50 billion.

While acknowledging increasing concerns in Congress and among the public over the nation's growing debt, Obama said critics present a "false choice" between paying down deficits and investing in job creation and economic growth.

To pay for the new programs, the administration is citing the Treasury Department's report on Monday that it expects to get back $200 billion in taxpayer-approved bank bailout funds faster than expected.

Obama suggested this windfall would both help the government spend money on job creation while also paying down the nation's debt, which now totals $12 trillion.

Obama called the bank bailout, under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), "galling."

"There has rarely been a less loved — or more necessary — emergency program," Obama said. The program is expected to go out of business at the end of this year unless extended by Congress.

Since the program is costing taxpayers at least $200 billion less than expected, Obama said, "This gives us a chance to pay down the deficit faster than we thought possible and to shift funds that would have gone to help the banks on Wall Street to help create jobs on Main Street."

But Republicans continued to insist that the leftover and repaid TARP money must be used exclusively for deficit reduction and not for a new jobs program.

"The president's announcement is further proof that TARP has morphed from an emergency injection of liquidity to thaw frozen credit markets into a $700 billion revolving slush fund to promote the Democrats' political, social and economic agenda," said Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas.

Obama said he is backing the measures he outlined because they "will generate the greatest number of jobs while generating the greatest value for our economy."

"These targeted initiatives are right, and they are needed," he said.



View Larger Map


Sources: MSNBC, CNBC, Google Maps