Obama Takes Jobs Pitch On The Road

Less than 24 hours after addressing a joint session of Congress, President Obama traveled south down I-95 to showcase his latest jobs proposal before a supportive audience of nearly 9,000 gathered on the campus of the University of Richmond.

Like his speech Thursday night, the president belted out his call for Congress to “pass this bill” early and often. In between his impassioned appeals, Obama rattled off a laundry list of elements within the plan that the White House believes will attract the support of lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

Namely, Obama pointed to a series of proposed tax cuts and credits that, on paper, should have the blessing of congressional Republicans, who generally favor cutting taxes as a way to stimulate economic growth.

“Everything in the American Jobs Act,” Obama said, “is the kind of proposal that’s been supported in the past by both Democrats and Republicans.”

“Nothing radical in this bill,” he added.

(Click here to see video of Obama’s speech today)

Roughly $245 billion (over half) of the $447 billion plan would be generated through creating or extending new or current tax cuts. $140 billion would be spent on rehiring teachers and first responders, retrofitting schools, encouraging businesses to hire veterans returning from overseas, contracting out surface transportation projects and creating a national infrastructure bank. Finally, another $60 billion would be used to extend unemployment benefits and provide incentives for businesses to hire folks that have been out of work for longer than six months.

It’s an expensive plan that will no doubt cause some in Congress to recoil out of sticker shock. But the president today promised that “everything in it will be paid for.”

Last night, he guaranteed lawmakers that “The American Jobs Act will not add to the deficit.”

Early next week, Obama is expected to present his own plan to cut the nation’s deficit to members of the newly-formed Joint Committee on Deficit Reduction. Though the stated goal of the panel is to identify $1.5 trillion in savings over the next decade, the president will ask them to go further to make sure that his measure is paid for.

Few details of the design are known, but Obama hinted last night that he’ll propose rasing tax rates on the wealthy (likely anyone making more than $250,000 per year), ending corporate tax loopholes, cutting spending and making modest reforms to Medicare and Medicaid.

“This approach is basically the one I’ve been advocating for months,” he told members of Congress. “This isn’t political grandstanding. This isn’t class warfare. This is simple math.”