Daley Swipes Palin In New Interview

White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley appears to be less than impressed with former Alaska Governor and one-time Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin.

In an interview with Politico’s Roger Simon published this morning, Daley was asked whether he thinks next year’s election between Obama and whoever the GOP selects to run against him will be close.

Daley’s response referenced Obama’s fairly close victory over Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and his running-mate, Palin, in 2008.

“Look at ’08, the president got 53 percent of the vote,” Daley said to Simon. “Against a relatively older candidate who had Sarah Palin as a running mate! And he gets [only] 53 percent of the vote! So why would this not be a close election?”

Daley’s mentioning of Palin in that context seems to imply that she is viewed by the White House as an inferior candidate who may have not belonged on the ticket.

Palin emerged in 2008 as a superstar to conservative voters impressed by her candor and energy. Through her bus tours, Fox News appearances and occasional Facebook rants against Obama, Palin has since been able to elevate herself into a recognized brand in politics.

She created a huge buzz by flirting with a 2012 presidential bid, with flocks of journalists scrambling to cover her every move. But eventually, she announced in early October that she would not run.

Despite her status as a leader in the conservative Tea Party movement, the White House has rarely, if ever, engaged her on the issues.

TRNS reached out to Palin for comment, but has yet to receive a response.

McCain: Obama "In Full Campaign Mode"

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) shot back at Obama Tuesday after the President charged that Congressional Republicans lack a legitimate jobs plan.

“I think thats very unfortunate to mock serious proposals. I think it really indicates he’s in full campaign mode,”  McCain, who co-authored the GOP’s jobs proposal, told reporters.

The Jobs Through Growth Act, which was introduced by Senate Republicans last Thursday, does not contain provisions from President Obama’s stalled jobs package. Instead, it focuses on repealing the healthcare reform law and adding a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. 

McCain levied additional criticism at the President’s decision to host a three day bus tour through North Carolina and Virginia.

“Going down their on the tax payers dime, calling it not a campaign event and then attacking Republicans is probably the worst overreach I’ve observed in the years that I’ve been in the Congress,” McCain 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. 

Unemployment Rate Unwavered By Uptick In Jobs Numbers

The United States exceeded economists’ expectations by adding 103,000 jobs to the nation’s workforce in September, but the uptick did little to shake an idle unemployment rate as it sits unchanged at 9.1 percent, according to the Labor Department.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics credits the expansion in employment to the 45,000 disgruntled Verizon employees previously on strike who have returned to work, accounting for nearly half of all job creation last month.

RNC Chair Reince Priebus took the opportunity to blast the president’s jobs bill, calling it “Stimulus 2.0” and denouncing its touted potential impact on the country’s economy.

“Today’s disappointing jobs report underscores why President Obama’s Stimulus 2.0 is not the answer to put Americans back to work. After putting $825 billion on the nation’s credit card only to have 32 straight months of unemployment at 8 percent or above, it is remarkable that the President would double down on the same policies at the tune of nearly half a trillion dollars in more ‘stimulus’ spending,” said Priebus.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) was even less than enthusiastic about September’s “sad numbers” saying Democrats “need to stop campaigning, start listening and start working,” a likely rollover from Thursday’s Obama’s-thrown-in-the-towel jab.

“Our unemployment rate has been higher than eight percent for more than two-and-a-half years, far above what [Obama] promised with the ‘stimulus,’” Boehner said in a statement.

Katherine Abraham, a member of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, also acknowledged that the stagnant 9.1 percent unemployment rate was “unacceptably high” and promoted the American Jobs Act as a means to expedite the economic recovery process.

“Clearly, we need faster economic growth to put Americans back to work,” Abraham said, but she reminded that September’s jobs numbers be taken with a grain of salt.

“The monthly employment and unemployment numbers are volatile and employment estimates are subject to substantial revision,” she said. “Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”

Republicans Tout Massive Anti-Obamacare Petition

By Mike Hothi

A collection of Republicans from both chambers touted a massive online petition Wednesday as evidence that the American people are firmly in favor of repealing the Affordable Care Act.

The petition, collected by RepealItNow.Org and presented to lawmakers this week, reportedly contains 1.6 million signatures.

Speaking during a press conference outside the U.S. Capitol, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) cited the outpouring of support as evidence that the health care reform law should be overturned immediately, before the Supreme Court weighs in.

“This is not a partisan issue. This is an American issue,” DeMint, standing behind a stack of boxes containing the petition, said. “We cannot wait for the courts.”

The Affordable Care Act was signed into law last year and has been Conservatives’ go-to example for intrusive government under the Obama administration. The Supreme Court will likely determine the constitutionality of the law’s personal insurance mandate before the end of their current term.