US President Barack Obama said on Thursday that his jobs plan could boost growth by 2 percent and shave 1 percent off the unemployment rate, in his most specific push yet for the bill’s passage.
The US$447 billion plan is crucial for Obama’s hopes of reviving his political fortunes and regaining the trust of US voters on the economy as he starts his re-election campaign for next year.
The White House has been wary of making predictions for the “American Jobs Act” in the knowledge that its forecasts for Obama’s 2009 stimulus plan turned out to be too rosy, handing his foes a potent political weapon.
However, Obama gave more details at a Democratic Party fundraiser in Washington, as he stepped up his campaign to force the US Congress to pass the bill, which is weighted towards payroll tax cuts.
“It is estimated that the ‘American Jobs Act’ would add two percentage points to the GDP, and add as many as 1.9 million jobs, and bring the unemployment rate down by a full percentage point,” Obama said.
In less detailed language, the president argued the jobs bill could help the economy grow by up to 2 percent in an interview with NBC at the weekend, but Thursday’s comment was his first use of detailed estimates for the plan.
Obama’s remarks matched the estimates for the plan produced by Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. Estimates by other experts have suggested the bill would have a smaller impact.
Currently, an unemployment rate of 9.1 percent, growing fears of a new recession and a stagnant recovery are casting doubts over the president’s reelection hopes next year.
The White House has been haunted for two years by predictions that Obama’s US$800 billion stimulus plan, passed soon after he came to office, would hold unemployment below 8 percent.
Obama also stepped up his campaign against the unpopular Congress, especially Republicans who have already rejected the series of tax hikes on the wealthiest Americans and corporations with which he wants to pay for his bill.
“This Congress, they are accustomed to doing nothing and they’re comfortable with doing nothing, and they keep on doing nothing, but I will tell you, we intend to keep the pressure on,” Obama said, noting that he had traveled to swing states Ohio, North Carolina and Virginia in recent days on a hard sell for the jobs plan he unveiled last week.
“We are going to run this like a campaign, in the sense that we’ve got to take it to the American people and make the case as to why it is possible for Washington to make a difference right now.”
Next week, Obama will travel to Cincinnati to visit a bridge badly in need of repairs to highlight the infrastructure spending portion of his economic plan, designed to put construction workers back to work.
The bridge spans the Ohio River between the state of Ohio, home to Republican House Speaker John Boehner and Kentucky, the state of the top Republican in the US Senate Mitch McConnell.
Earlier, Boehner criticized Obama’s plan, saying its tax credits were not enough to create private sector employment.
“Let’s be honest with ourselves,” the Republican representative said in a speech at the Economic Club of Washington. “The president’s proposals are a poor substitute for the pro-growth policies that are needed to remove barriers to job creation in America ... the policies that are needed to put America back to work. If we want job growth, we need to recognize who really creates jobs in America. It’s the private-sector.”
Boehner repeated an earlier concession that some of Obama’s ideas “offer opportunities for common ground” between Democrats and Republicans to revive the US economy as it struggles to recover from the global meltdown of 2008.
However, he echoed other leading Republicans who derided Obama’s proposals on Wednesday and was otherwise scathing of the jobs bill.
ANGER: A video shared online showed residents in a neighborhood confronting the national security minister, attempting to drag her toward floodwaters Argentina’s port city of Bahia Blanca has been “destroyed” after being pummeled by a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, killing 13 and driving hundreds from their homes, authorities said on Saturday. Two young girls — reportedly aged four and one — were missing after possibly being swept away by floodwaters in the wake of Friday’s storm. The deluge left hospital rooms underwater, turned neighborhoods into islands and cut electricity to swaths of the city. Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said Bahia Blanca was “destroyed.” The death toll rose to 13 on Saturday, up from 10 on Friday, authorities
RARE EVENT: While some cultures have a negative view of eclipses, others see them as a chance to show how people can work together, a scientist said Stargazers across a swathe of the world marveled at a dramatic red “Blood Moon” during a rare total lunar eclipse in the early hours of yesterday morning. The celestial spectacle was visible in the Americas and Pacific and Atlantic oceans, as well as in the westernmost parts of Europe and Africa. The phenomenon happens when the sun, Earth and moon line up, causing our planet to cast a giant shadow across its satellite. But as the Earth’s shadow crept across the moon, it did not entirely blot out its white glow — instead the moon glowed a reddish color. This is because the
DEBT BREAK: Friedrich Merz has vowed to do ‘whatever it takes’ to free up more money for defense and infrastructure at a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty Germany’s likely next leader Friedrich Merz was set yesterday to defend his unprecedented plans to massively ramp up defense and infrastructure spending in the Bundestag as lawmakers begin debating the proposals. Merz unveiled the plans last week, vowing his center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) bloc and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — in talks to form a coalition after last month’s elections — would quickly push them through before the end of the current legislature. Fraying Europe-US ties under US President Donald Trump have fueled calls for Germany, long dependent on the US security umbrella, to quickly
Local officials from Russia’s ruling party have caused controversy by presenting mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine with gifts of meat grinders, an appliance widely used to describe Russia’s brutal tactics on the front line. The United Russia party in the northern Murmansk region posted photographs on social media showing officials smiling as they visited bereaved mothers with gifts of flowers and boxed meat grinders for International Women’s Day on Saturday, which is widely celebrated in Russia. The post included a message thanking the “dear moms” for their “strength of spirit and the love you put into bringing up your sons.” It
RSS