Pelosi Shuns Keystone Pipeline Inclusion For Job Bills

By Janie Amaya

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told reporters Thursday that including the Keystone XL Pipeline in a jobs bill is not a responsible way to create jobs and has no place in the bill, during her weekly news briefing.

After meeting with President Obama and the House Democratic leadership earlier in the day, Pelosi said it is necessary for something to be done before year’s end.

“The president pressed upon us, and we all agreed, that we can’t go home for the holidays until we pass a payroll tax cut for working families in our country and extend unemployment insurance,” Pelosi said.

She argued that Republicans continue to resist a federal tax cut that could help million Americans and said it is just not right.

“The Congressional Republicans are holding up a payroll tax cut that will help 160 million Americans. They are holding that up because they want to protect tax cuts for the wealthiest 300,000,” Pelosi said.

Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) said he is in agreement with President Obama that the American people can not  wait on jobs any longer.

“We agree whole-heartedly with the president. The Keystone Pipeline project will create tens and thousands of jobs immediately. It has bipartisan support in the House and the Senate,” Boehner said.
   
However, Pelosi said, “Republicans are trying to associate themselves with the tax cuts, but not without injecting… ‘poison pills’ into the legislation they know will not possibly pass the Senate.”

GOP Ignoring Middle Class, Say House Dems

By Janie Amaya 

The top two Democrats in the House today accused Republicans of unfairly holding up a payroll tax cut extension for middle-class workers.

“We cannot go home for Christmas unless we pass this legislation,” said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). “The clock is ticking,”

Pelosi urged Republicans to work with her party on continuing the tax cut through the end of next year.

“We’re always open to what they have to say. So far, we haven’t heard anything that even sounds like a serious attempt of bipartisan compromise.”

The former Speaker bristled at the notion that Republican leaders are unhappy with taxing the rich to offset the cost of keeping the tax cut alive.

“Republicans never want to pay for the tax cut for the wealthiest people in our country. Doesn’t that strike you as funny? For the middle income tax cut, it has to be paid for. Tax cuts for the wealthy, we don’t pay for that.”

Pelosi said that savings from the winding down of the “OCO,” or Overseas Contingency Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, should be available to spend on domestic jobs initiatives that would otherwise require extensive cuts in other areas of the federal budget.

“The [resources] will be used for something and we’re saying they should be used as a priority to give a tax cut to the middle class and other issues that are of concern to the middle class,” she said.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) and other Republicans, however, have argued that the war savings should strictly be used to pay down the nation’s nearly $15 trillion debt.

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Democrats will try to push through an extension of the payroll tax cut, even if some Republicans decide to vote against it again.

“We are prepared to cooperate on behalf of the welfare of our country and of our people.”

Geoff Holtzman contributed to this report, which was updated at 5:02 p.m.

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…

Boehner Challenges Obama To 'Take Yes For An Answer'

By Andrea Salazar

Following the Senate’s rejection of President Obama’s American Jobs Act and the recent approval of three key trade agreements, the Speaker of the House is asking the president to find common ground with congressional Republicans.

“It’s time for the White House to stop the campaigning and start listening and working with bipartisan members of Congress to do what the American people expect of us - find common ground and move ahead,” said House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) at a Thursday press conference.

The House Speaker also argued that passing the free-trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea, coupled with the House’s work to repeal the 3 percent withholding tax on federal contracts are testament to the amount of collaboration going on in Congress. Boehner called on Obama to work with Congress get Americans back to work. 

“I would tell… and challenge the president to take ‘yes’ for an answer,” Boehner said.

Senate Rejects Obama's Jobs Plan

UPDATED: As expected, the Senate rejected President Obama’s $447 billion jobs plan Tuesday, ending its legislative life as an assembled package. 

The bill fell well short of the 60 votes needed to proceed, garnering support from only 50 members while 49 members opposed it. 

Sens. Bob Nelson (D-Neb.) and Jon Tester (D-Mont.) joined Republicans in opposing the bill, but centrist Democratic Sens. Jim Web and Joe Lieberman, who voted in favor of debating the bill, said they’d vote against the bill in a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ situation. 

Obama’s jobs plan may be dead as a unified deal, but Democrats will continue to push to pass the bill piece by piece. A proposal to extend payroll tax cuts could be the first among many smaller provisions to be passed. 

The Senate is also expected Wednesday to pass three lingering trade agreements with South Korea, Panama and Colombia that have been touted by both Republicans and Democrats as job creators. 

This story was updated at 8:21a.m. EST…

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama has hit the road in recent weeks, using more than a dozen public appearances to push Congress to vote on and pass his American Jobs Act as a whole. 

The Senate will be the first body to act on the president’s jobs bill, with a vote expected Tuesday evening. However, the effort led by Obama to label congressional Republicans as obstructionists could put vulnerable Democrats facing tough reelections in a bind. 

Sen. Chuck Schumer tiptoed around questions from NBC’s Chuck Todd over the amount of Democratic support the bill would receive in the upper chamber, only saying that “you are going to see the overwhelming majority of Democrats vote for a jobs bill.”

The third-ranking Senate Democrat expressed little optimism on the jobs bill’s chances of surviving a Senate vote.

“We are not going to get their votes today,” Schumer said of a number of moderate Senate Republicans.

President Obama indicated late last week in a news conference with reporters that he would pursue a piece-by-piece approach to getting his jobs bill through Congress should Tuesday’s vote be shot down. It seems as though Democrats in the Senate have taken that notion to heart as rumors of a “Plan B,” which breaks the bill into smaller provisions with a higher probability of garnering bipartisan support, have already begun taking shape. 

Meanwhile, labor leaders are literally praying for the bill to pass. A small group of labor leaders, including members of the Service Employees International Union, are expected to hold a prayer vigil on Capitol Hill just before senators are expected to vote.