(Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
The
president asks, the Senate
will try to deliver.
(Reuters) - President Barack Obama's fellow Democrats in the Senate plan to bring up for consideration this week a portion of Obama's stalled $447 billion jobs bill, a senior party aide said on Monday.
In conjunction with the White House, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is crafting an initial stand-alone piece of the bill that would provide $35 billion to help states hire and prevent layoffs of teachers, firefighters and police officers, the aide said.[...]
Democrats initially planned to wait until November to bring individual sections of the bill to the Senate for consideration but changed plans and decided to start the process this week, the aide said.
This comes as President Obama is amping up his criticism of Congress, explaining the new approach on the jobs bill, saying, "Maybe they couldn't understand the whole thing at once ... We're going to break it up into bite-sized pieces, so they—they can take a thoughtful approach ... We're going to give members of Congress another chance to step up to the plate and do the right thing."
But he's also getting more pointed in his criticism of Republicans.
Washington (CNN) -- President Barack Obama took the push for his stalled $447 billion jobs plan on the road Monday, telling a North Carolina audience that alternative proposals put forward by his Republican critics amount to little more than sops to the rich that will gut critical regulations and fail to restore economic growth.
My "bill will help put people back to work and give our economy a boost right away," Obama told the crowd at Asheville Regional Airport. "But apparently none of this matters" to GOP leaders.
"I've gone out of my way to find areas of cooperation" with congressional Republicans, the president declared. "We're going to give members of Congress another chance to step up to the plate and do the right thing."
But "if they vote against these proposals again ... then they're not going to have to answer to me. They're going to have to answer to you," he said.
Meanwhile, "House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and California Reps. Dana Rohrabacher and Ed Royce will be together in [Southern California] for a fund-raising event." And John McCain says that President Obama is just on the campaign trail, rather than trying to put America back to work. That means that the Senate vote this week will give Obama and the Democrats more fodder for shaming the Republicans.