WASHINGTON — The Senate blocked President Barack
Obama’s jobs plan Tuesday night, prompting Democratic leaders to begin
laying plans to divide the $447 billion package into pieces they hope
will be too politically popular to oppose.
The
legislation, which is the centerpiece of Obama’s latest effort to boost
the struggling economy and avoid what economists warn could be a
double-dip recession, failed to attract the votes needed to overcome a
filibuster. Sixty were needed, and it received just 50 — with all 46
Republicans present voting against.
Now, Democrats
will bring up individual elements of the bill that have widespread
appeal in opinion polls. They are likely to include a tax break for
workers and funds to prevent teacher layoffs, as well as new spending on
road construction and school modernization. Other provisions include
tax credits for companies that expand their payrolls and hire veterans
looking for jobs.
One of the most controversial
provisions was a 5.6 percent surtax on millionaires, starting in 2013,
that was designed to pay for the legislation.
Even
before the vote, Obama acknowledged the bill faced certain defeat and
conceded the White House would have to take a new approach. “We’re going
to have to break it up,” he said shortly after meeting with a group of
business and labor leaders in Pittsburgh.
“Folks
should ask their senators, ‘Why would you consider voting against
putting teachers and police officers back to work?’ Ask them what’s
wrong with having folks who have made millions or billions of dollars to
pay a little more,” Obama said after meeting with his Jobs Council. The
unemployment rate for September was 9.1 percent.
The
GOP-led House has refused to consider Obama’s proposal. Rep. Eric
Cantor, R-Va., the majority leader, said he welcomed a breakup of the
bill, but dismissed the proposed tax hike on the wealthy as a
“nonstarter.”
“Hopefully this says this is the end
of the political games,” Cantor said. “Our message is we do have some
potential to agree on some things.”
Unemployed
workers converged on the Capitol Tuesday to hold protests and a prayer
vigil to press for passage. The demonstration recalled the “Occupy Wall
Street” protests occurring across the country.
Republicans
have stood en masse against additional federal spending to spur the
economy. And even some Democrats oppose the “millionaires’ tax.”
“You
can’t tax your way out of an economic downturn,” said Sen. Jim Webb,
D-Va., who opposes the bill even though he voted to end the filibuster.
Two
Democrats facing difficult re-elections voted to block the legislation —
Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Sen. Jon Tester of Montana. Majority
Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., initially voted to halt the filibuster, but
later switched his vote under a procedural rule that will allow him to
bring up the bill again in the future.
One senator, Tom Coburn, R-Okla., missed the vote while undergoing treatment for prostate cancer.
Sen.
Charles Schumer of New York, the architect of the Democratic message
operation in the Senate, will argue at a Washington forum Wednesday that
the proposals are desperately needed to help the country avoid a
double-dip recession.
The payroll tax break would
provide workers with an average of $1,500 annually. An existing payroll
tax reduction, which is worth about an average of $1,000 a year, is set
to expire in December. Obama has proposed extending and increasing that
tax break for 2012.
“We are struggling now to
avoid a recession,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moodys.com, who
has estimated Obama’s jobs package would shave a percentage point off
the unemployment rate. “If we allow that to expire … we face a
significant risk of going back into recession.”
Other
elements of the Obama package are also expected to come before the
Senate, including ones that would provide $35 billion to states to
prevent layoffs of teachers, firefighters and first responders and $25
billion for school modernization.
Schumer is
preparing legislation that would combine Obama’s proposal for a $10
billion infrastructure bank to spur road and highway improvements with a
GOP-backed proposal for a tax break for companies that repatriate
overseas profits. He hopes the matchup would generate bipartisan
support.
Advisers to the president argue that
Americans are rallying around his call to pass the job-creation plan.
The more he talks about it, they say, the more support swells.
In
a memo to campaign staff Tuesday, Obama strategist David Axelrod said
“support has grown by nearly 10 percent” over the past three weeks as
the president has barnstormed for the bill.
When
Obama travels to Michigan on Friday, he will slightly adjust his
message. Rather than urging crowds to tell Congress to “Pass this bill!”
as he has done for the past month, he’ll talk about passing it piece by
piece, according to one senior administration official who expects that
the payroll tax is likely to be the first provision to come before
Congress.
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