President Obama redoubled his efforts to sell his jobs package Tuesday, firing broadsides at House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., and taunting a would-be Republican challenger, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, even as new evidence emerged that one of the president’s major job programs is already failing.
“I’d like Mr. Cantor to come down here to Dallas and explain what in this jobs bill does he not believe in,” Obama said during a stop in Perry’s backyard. “And if you won’t do that, at least put this jobs bill up for a vote so that the entire country knows exactly where every member of Congress stands.”
Obama singled out Cantor after the Virginia Republican declared that the GOP-led House wouldn’t vote on the president’s American Jobs Act in its entirety.
“As I’ve said from the outset, the all-or-nothing approach is just unacceptable,” Cantor said Monday, bucking Obama’s demand that Congress approve the package by the end of October.
The president intensified his push for the jobs package even as the U.S. Labor Department released a new report showing that a $500 million “green jobs” training program intended to create 80,000 jobs in the renewable energy industry by 2013 has achieved only 10 percent of its goal so far.
“At this point, there is no evidence that grantees will effectively use the funds and deliver targeted employment outcomes by the end of the grant periods,” said Labor Department Assistant Inspector General Elliott Lewis, who investigated the program. Lewis said the department has spent about a third of the money allocated for the jobs program and may return the unspent money.
Obama is kicking his campaign into high gear — attending back-to-back fundraisers in Dallas, delivering a speech in nearby Mesquite, and then flying off to two more fundraisers in Missouri, all of it packed into a 10-hour trip Tuesday.
Last month, the president traveled to a bridge linking Ohio and Kentucky, the home states of House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to pitch his $447 billion jobs plan and to step up pressure on congressional Republicans to pass his plan.
“Would you rather keep tax loopholes for oil companies that are doing just fine?” Obama asked supporters, daring them to agree with Republicans. “Or do you want to put our construction workers and teachers back to work?”
While the president traveled, the White House released a report showing that the American Jobs Act would create at least 400,000 jobs in education.
Obama has seen his approval ratings drop precipitously since being swept into office in 2008 as the economy continues to sag and unemployment hovers around 9 percent. Jobs remain the top priority of most voters, polls show, and as the president ramps up his 2012 re-election bid, his most crucial mission is convincing voters that he has helped put Americans back to work.
Republicans have assailed Obama’s efforts, which they said rely too heavily on massive government spending and have done nothing to improve the economy.
“Two and a half years after the stimulus was signed into law, there are 1.7 million fewer jobs in America,” McConnell said Tuesday. “And the president is just this week getting around to free trade agreements we knew would create jobs.”
Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/2050/01/obama-pushes-jobs-bill-while-green-labor-program-fails#ixzz1ZrEwIiAY
