GOP Playing With Fire On Jobs Bill

Today President Obama's jobs bill is coming up for a vote in the Senate. They'll probably vote on both versions of the bill -- the one that raises taxes for everyone making over $250,000 a year and the one that just imposes a surtax of slightly more than 5%on people making $1 million or more. But it doesn't matter which version you like best, because the Senate Republicans have said they will not allow a cloture vote to succeed and stop their filibuster of the bill (which requires 60 votes).

But even if by some miracle the jobs bill did pass the Senate, it stands absolutely no chance of passing the Republican-dominated House of Representatives. Republican economic leader Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin says it is because President Obama has refused to "negotiate" a compromise that is acceptable to both parties. That may be one of the biggest lies he has ever told.

If we've learned anything from the last couple of years in Washington, it's this -- it's not the president who's unwilling to compromise, it's the Republicans. The president has tried to compromise time and time again, but every effort has been rebuffed by the congressional Republicans. And they're not willing to compromise on this jobs bill either.

The Republicans have already shown there is no part of the president's jobs bill that they could accept. They don't like giving a payroll tax break to the bottom 90% of Americans. They don't like appropriating money to renovate and upgrade our transportation infrastructure. They don't like the idea of fixing up around 35,000 school buildings. And they don't like tying tax breaks for small businesses to job creation.

In fact, there is only one thing they do like. They still want to give the richest Americans and the biggest corporations more and bigger tax breaks. It doesn't matter to the Republicans that these people already control more of the country's wealth and income than since the 1920s, and are not producing any new jobs. There is no reason to believe that giving the richest Americans even more money will produce jobs either.

What the Republicans don't seem to understand is that President Obama knew they wouldn't pass the jobs plan when he introduced it. He's laying an electoral trap for them, and they are walking straight into it -- either willingly or unknowingly. A huge majority of Americans have said that the number one issue in America is job creation, and they've been saying this for a while now. They're not going to be happy with the killing of any jobs bill right now -- even one as modest as the one proposed by the president.

When the Republicans kill this jobs bill, the president is going to beat them over the head with that for the next year. And if he's smart, he'll make insignificant changes to the bill and re-introduce it over and over again -- forcing the Republicans to repeatedly vote against job creation. And when they do that they're playing with electoral fire -- a fire that could burn more than their fingers in November 2012.

The Republicans look at the president's approval numbers (around 40% right now) and think they can beat him in the next election. But they are overlooking their own abysmal approval numbers (around 15% currently). And while the public is not too happy with either party right now, they are more unhappy with the congressional Republicans -- and killing a bill to create jobs is not going to help those pathetic numbers.

It looks like the president has finally found his backbone. He's virtually daring the Republicans to kill the jobs bill. And they are falling right into his trap.