Focus on jobs

President Obama pushes his proposal

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

Wasting no time, President Barack Obama pitched his $447 billion jobs program of tax cuts and new spending Friday on the turf of a Republican opponent, challenging Congress to “pass this bill.” Republicans were noncommittal.

A day after addressing a joint session of Congress, Obama went to Richmond, Va., the district represented by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, a prominent GOP critic of the president.

“I know that folks sometimes think they’ve used up the benefit of the doubt, but I’m an eternal optimist,” the president told more than 8,000 people at the University of Richmond. “I’m an optimistic person. I believe if you just stay at it long enough, after they’ve exhausted all the other options, folks do the right thing.”

But Republicans did not line up to endorse the president’s plan after Thursday night’s address.

“The proposals the president outlined tonight merit consideration,” House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said after Obama laid out an agenda that leaned heavily on payroll tax cuts to put money into the economy. “We hope he gives serious consideration to our ideas as well.

“It’s my hope that we can work together,” Boehner added.

While noncommittal, it was one of the more generous reactions from Republicans to a speech from a Democratic president in political trouble seeking bipartisanship to repair a long-ailing economy.

“You should pass it right away,” the president told lawmakers more than once, and he pledged to campaign for its enactment “in every corner of this country.”

There were other hints that Obama intends to carry the fight to Republicans, including his statement that “there’s a bridge that needs repair between Ohio and Kentucky” — the states that sent Boehner and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell to Congress.

Obama offered no estimate of the number of jobs his plan would create.