Senate rejects Obama’s jobs bill

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

United against President Barack Obama, Senate Republicans voted Tuesday night to kill the jobs package the president had spent weeks campaigning for across the country, a stinging loss at the hands of lawmakers opposed to stimulus-style spending and a tax increase on the very wealthy.

Forty-six Republicans joined with two Democrats to filibuster the $447 billion plan. Fifty Democrats had voted for it, but the vote was not final. The roll call was kept open to allow Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., to vote. The likely 51-48 eventual tally would be far short of the 60 votes needed to keep the bill alive in the 100-member Senate.

The demise of Obama’s $447 billion jobs package was expected, despite his campaign-style efforts to swing the public behind it. The White House and leaders in Congress already were moving on to alternative ways to address the nation’s painful 9.1 percent unemployment, including breaking the legislation into smaller, more digestible pieces and approving long-stalled trade bills.

Even before the tally officially closed, Obama resumed the campaign for the measure.

The White House appears most confident that it will be able to continue a 2-percentage-point Social Security payroll tax cut through 2012 and to extend emergency unemployment benefits to millions of people — if only because, in the White House view, Republicans won’t want to accept the political harm of letting those provisions expire.

White House officials also are hopeful of ultimately garnering votes for the approval of infrastructure spending and tax credits for businesses that hire unemployed veterans.

Democrats Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Jon Tester of Montana — both up for re-election next year in states where Obama figures to lose — broke with their party on the vote. Every Republican present opposed the plan.

Earlier in the day, Obama capped his weeks-long campaign for the measure in an appearance typical of the effort — a tough-talking speech in a swing state crucial to his re-election. In fact, it seemed aimed more at rallying his core political supporters heading into the election than changing minds on Capitol Hill.

Democrats were not wholly united behind the measure. In addition to Nelson and Tester, Sens. Jim Webb, D-Va., Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut independent who aligns with Democrats, said they oppose the underlying measure despite voting to choke off the filibuster.