White House... Pass It All!

by: Les Carpenter
Rational Nation USA
Birthplace of Independent Conservatism
Liberty -vs- Tyranny

Obama Addressing the Joint Session of Congress

The POTUS gave his jobs speech, and surprisingly enough there are some sensible ideas that deserve debate and consideration. Republicans listened and are signaling there are area's for agreement and bipartisanship.

POLITICO - House Republicans are planning to peel off portions of President Barack Obama’s plan that they find favorable, and pass them separately.

GOP leaders are planning to pick the most passable items out of the bill — trade agreements, small business relief measures, revamped unemployment insurance — and pass them separately.

“This is my objection to the message that was delivered tonight,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) told reporters in the Capitol after the speech. “The message was: either accept my package as it is, or I will take it to the American people. I would say that that’s the wrong approach. What we’re here to do is try to transcend differences, not let them get in the way in the areas we can make progress on.”

Cantor added that “as majority leader, I certainly would like to see us be able to peel off some of these ideas, put them on the floor, vote them across the floor and get the senate to join with us so we can actually get something to the president and make some progress as quickly as possible.”

The quick reaction from a top congressional Republican suggests the GOP is not outright dismissing all of Obama’s ideas, but certainly is not going to pass the entire $450 billion package in one fell swoop.

Speaker John Boehner also seemed open minded, saying proposals laid out in the Capitol Thursday night “merit consideration...

The White House response to the republicans willingness to pass parts of Obama's jobs bill... Pass it all.

The Plum Line - Yesterday, after the President finished up his speech last night, House Republicans responded by signaling an openness to passing parts of Obama’s new jobs bill, while signaling disapproval of Obama’s vow to barnstorm the country to get the American Jobs Act passed in its current form.

“The message was: either accept my package as it is, or I will take it to the American people,” Eric Cantor said. “I would say that that’s the wrong approach.”

Today, the White House offered its answer: Sorry, we want the whole bill passed. Nothing less.

With the spin war over the speech now shifting to a phase where Republicans are telegraphing a desire to compromise, even as Obama hits the road to sell his whole plan to the American people, this exchange on MSNBC this morning between Chuck Todd and White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer struck me as important:

TODD: The bill gets sent to Congress next week. Are you guys assuming that it gets sort of piecemealed, that at the end of the day you’re going to get some of what you want but not all of what you want?

PFEIFFER: No, we’re not assuming that. The president said it 16 times, I’ll say it a 17th time today. He wants them to pass the American Jobs Act. That’s the piece of legislation he’s sending up. It’s a simple thing. Puts the Americans back to work and puts more money into the pockets of working families. Our belief is that everything in this bill is reasonable. Everything in the bill has bipartisan support. Everything will have an effect right now. And so we want them to pass it.

So much for bipartisanship and negotiating in good faith. Aside from the reality that much of Obama's prior efforts at stimulating the economy and creating new jobs have been failures, he now wants to play hardball, putting the nation at risk of even greater economic uncertainty.  While at the same time further increasing the public debt.

Flopping Aces has an excellent post up that pretty much sums it up.

Did you hear Obama gave a speech last night? If you didn’t here is the summary…Infrastructure spending, bailouts to states to save government jobs, bailouts for mortgages, job training, unspecified regulatory reform, and some small tax credits for businesses and individuals.

Sound familiar?

It should. Its the 2009 Recovery Act Part II and not once did he acknowledge what a total and complete failure that was.

In 2009, President Obama promised that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) would “create or save” 3.5 million jobs over the next two years and that the unemployment rate would not rise above 8.5 percent. Rather, he said that, by the end of 2010, unemployment would have dropped to 7.25 percent. Furthermore, White House economists forecast that without ARRA spending, the unemployment rate would increase from 7 percent to 8.8 percent. Unfortunately, the administration’s estimates were wrong by a vast margin.

This week, Mercatus Center Senior Research Fellow Veronique de Rugy compares unemployment estimates from the president’s 2010 Budget—which contains the original proposed estimates for the impact of the stimulus on unemployment—with actual unemployment rates from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

While the cost of ARRA has risen to $840 billion—from the original $787 billion signed in 2009—the data reveal no marked improvement in employment as stimulus spending has increased. The large disparity between what the president promised and of the current unemployment levels contradicts the original claims about ARRA’s ability to improve unemployment conditions.

It failed so miserably so why not try it again eh?

“basically the [same ideas] I’ve been advocating for months.”

So the class warfare remains, tax hikes on business owners remain, bailouts remain….all to be paid for by a plan he will come up with later. Come on.

The whole tone of the speech was entirely political. It was an election speech and the country is tired of his speeches in which he ORDERS Washington to either pass it or he will tell Mommy and Daddy (the American people) and force them to accept it.

Whether Obama will play the role of King George, or use the grey matter and actually work with the republicans to forge a bill that just may accomplish the results all hope for is anybodies call.

We'll just have to wait and see.

Via: Memeorandum