GOP Makes Unified Push In Search Of Senate Action On Jobs Bills

By Andrea Salazar and Janie Amaya

House Republican Leaders Friday argued that their “Forgotten 15” jobs bills are piling up in the Senate as unemployment remains high.

“There is no reason for Senate Democrats to delay action on the bills any longer,” House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said at a news conference with fellow Republican leaders. “The House has been working all year on our plan for Americans job creators. It’s time for the Senate to do their work.”

The “Forgotten 15” are Republican-sponsored jobs bills that have already passed through the lower chamber. They include bills that prohibit regulation of the Internet and green house gas emissions to reduce costs to businesses.

Supercommittee member Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) argued that the bills prohibiting additional regulation is urgent, claiming that “the federal government is regulating small business out of business.”

Earlier this week the House passed four bills allowing access to financing for small businesses, something House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said is an important step in showing Americans that Washington is working for their interest.

“What small businesses want in this is less red tape in Washington so they can go about continuing to invest and create jobs,” Cantor said.

The movement pushing for action in the upper chamber continued on Capitol Hill with Republican Policy Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-Ga.) and a handful of Republican freshmen.

“We are distressed with what we see coming out of the White House and out of the Senate,” Price told reporters. 

The group criticized the Democratic-controlled Senate for holding up a number of bills they believe will combat the nation’s jobless rate. 

The newest report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicated that the unemployment rate fell to an even 9 percent, a slim improvement from the 9.1 percent recorded for September. The small group of House Republicans were harmonious in their message to President Obama, “We can’t wait either.”

“We can’t wait for you to get back to town to work with us and call on Harry Reid to pass the job creation bills already passed through House,” Price said. “The American people are sick and tired of this kind of craziness that doesn’t allow for the process to work.”

Benny Martinez contributed to this story…

Cantor Highlights Democratic Opposition To Jobs Bill

By Janie Amaya

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said Tuesday night’s vote in the Senate proved that the American Jobs Act is not just opposed by Republicans, but by Democrats as well.

“The Senate’s action last night, proved that the month-long campaign that the White House has been on to promote the Presidents bill, failed,” Cantor said during a press conference in the RNC’s lobby, noting that the vote demonstrated that the President couldn’t even get the necessary support in his own party to pass the bill.

He noted that even in the House, the chief sponsor of the President’s jobs bill put it in by request, which Cantor says does not indicate whole-hearted support of the bill.

“When we hear several on the other side of the aisle in the Senate indicate that somehow, this is [the Republican’s] economy and we’re to blame because we are not passing the President’s bill, I think we can all see through that now,” Cantor said.

The bill failed to pass its first procedural hurdle after two Democratic Senators, Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and Jon Tester (D-Mont.) voted against invoking cloture. Democrats would have likely seen more defectors if the package had moved to a final vote.

Speaker of the House, John Boehner (R-Ohio), who joined Cantor, said the American Jobs Act is contrary to what is needed right now to help small businesses grow, adding that moving forward with the Free Trade bills with Panama, Colombia, and South Korea is an area of common ground.

“We’re going to continue to work with the President in order to create a better environment,” Boehner said. “Not everything the President outlined is something we agree with, certainly not everything we’ve outlined is something the President would agree with.”