When he unveiled his $447 billion jobs bill, President Barack Obama reminded lawmakers that elections weren’t until next year, “and the people that elected us don’t have the luxury of waiting 14 months.”
He vowed to take the message that passing the American Jobs Act was “the right thing to do now” to every corner of the country.
Since then Obama has been to two corners — Washington state and southern California — and criss- crossed other portions with several stops in swing states where he has continued to make his pitch for the American Jobs Act.
He continues to pressure Congress to “pass this bill.” But make no mistake, his re-election campaign has started. He fired his opening salvo for voters in battleground Colorado on Tuesday.
“It’s been two weeks since I sent it to Congress,” the president said of his jobs bill. “And now I want it back.”
Listening to the president for the last two weeks, however, it seems as though what he really wants is a campaign fight that pits him as the protector of the middle class and small business against Republicans as the defenders of the wealthy.
How did we get here?
As Congress recessed in August after the debt-limit showdown, Obama promised to deliver a bill to address jobs. He did, and it was a measure that was met with cautious optimism on both sides.
The bill included tax cuts that Republicans would have a hard time opposing, breaks for small business, infrastructure investment, extended unemployment benefits and tax incentives for hiring new employees.
But the prospect of compromise was quickly stripped away.
When Obama unveiled his plans to pay for the bill via elimination of tax breaks for oil and gas producers and increased taxes on the wealthy, Republicans reiterated their staunch opposition to tax hikes. They criticized the president for offering up a plan that was not bipartisan in spirit.
They asserted that the measure could be paid for with cuts alone, and opposed any measure that would increase taxes.
And Obama had them right where he wanted them. A week later, in unveiling his $3.2 trillion deficit-cutting plan, the president threatened to veto any plan from Congress that didn’t include new taxes on the wealthy alongside cuts.
If the president vetoes the work of the supercommittee, which is charged with coming up with at least $1.2 trillion in cuts by November, Congress is faced with the prospect of $1.2 trillion in automatic cuts split equally between defense and domestic spending.
“It is fair to say we’ve entered a new phase,” White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer told The New York Times. “We were in a position of legislative compromise by necessity. That phase is behind us.”
While it’s true that the nation doesn’t have 14 months for Washington to act on jobs, it’s hard to see any phase, other than the campaign, ahead of us.
