Democrats' Jobs Bill Delayed
"We do believe very emphatically that we're going to be able to have a bipartisan bill on Monday," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said last week. Reid said Democrats would introduce legislation with or without Republican support, even though they need at least one GOP vote to get past a filibuster.
Lawmakers are still negotiating, however, over issues such as how to pay for the legislation, Politico reports. Republicans are reportedly opposed to using returned bank bailout funds for the bill, which Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch estimated would cost $80 billion. The centerpiece of the bill is likely to be a tax credit for small and medium-sized companies that hire new employees.
"The thing about around here is nothing's agreed to until everything's agreed to," said Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), who's leading the negotiations, according to Politico. "We can be very close, and it can collapse because something went haywire."
Republican and Democratic congressional leaders will continue their discussion over job creation with administration officials at the White House on Tuesday, the New York Times reports.
President Obama last week said there was cause for hope in the government's latest unemployment figures, which showed last month's jobless rates to be lower than expected at 9.7 percent. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the declining jobless rate a "welcome step in the right direction and highlighted a chart showing the number of jobs lost in the last year of the Bush administration as compared with the jobs lost in Mr. Obama's first year in office.