WASHINGTON — Congress is unlikely to approve the jobs package that President Barack Obama has been pushing relentlessly from coast to coast, day after day, for almost a month.
Republicans don’t like its proposed tax increases. Some Democrats are reluctant to endorse another cut in Social Security taxes; others are wary of oil and gas tax hikes. And Obama’s low approval ratings are making it hard for him to build momentum.
When Capitol Hill lawmakers return Monday from a weeklong break, the first order of business in the Democratic-run Senate won’t be the president’s $447 billion jobs package but legislation dealing with Chinese currency manipulation.
“We’ll get to that,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said of the jobs plan, which he says he supports. “But let’s get some of these things done that we have to get done first.”
In the House, the Republican majority won’t accept Obama’s proposed tax increases.
“I can’t really make sense of why the president thinks he should be doing this,” said House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia.
The president introduced his economic rescue plan to a joint session of Congress on Sept. 8, an unusual forum for launching such an initiative. Since then, he has traveled the country and given interviews to local news media insisting on its quick approval.
The package includes aid for cities and towns, help for school and road construction projects, Social Security payroll tax cuts and assistance for the long-term unemployed. A series of tax increases, notably limiting tax deductions for the wealthy, would offset the cost of the measure.
Despite talk from GOP leaders that they hope to find common ground on jobs — talk that hasn’t resulted in any serious negotiations with Democrats — Republicans see opposing Obama as good politics.
“The Republicans have no stake in handing the president a victory in the next 12 months,” said Gary Jacobson, a congressional expert at the University of California, San Diego.
Of course, Obama’s public campaign for his jobs bill is, in effect, the opening round of his re-election campaign.
“The president is really laying down the gauntlet to Congress,” said Darrell West, director of governance studies at Washington’s Brookings Institution, a center-left research center. “If Congress doesn’t act, he’ll have a perfect campaign issue.”
