US President Barack Obama urged Republicans on Saturday to stop picking "ideological fights" and focus instead on job creation efforts as he pressed Congress to begin voting next week piece by piece on his defeated jobs package. With an eye to the 2012 election, Obama is working with fellow Democrats to break into parts his $447 billion jobs bill - which Republicans blocked in the Senate on Tuesday - and challenge their opponents to show where they stand.
He used his weekly radio speech to showcase his strategy of painting the Republicans as obstructionists impeding his drive to revive the stalled economy and reduce stubbornly high unemployment, considered crucial to his re-election prospects. But, in the Republicans' Saturday radio address, Representative Kevin McCarthy countered that his party was pursuing concrete ideas to jump-start the economy and called on Obama to "come off the campaign trail and get to work." Republicans say Obama's original package was laden with what they see as wasteful spending and counterproductive tax hikes for wealthier Americans, and say he seems more interested in demonising them than working to find common ground.
The deadlock has raised concerns that political dysfunction in Washington will block any major steps to spur hiring before November 2012 presidential and congressional elections. "Republicans (in the House of Representatives) spent the past couple days picking partisan ideological fights," Obama said, citing Republican proposals over the past week to ease environmental regulations and restrict abortion funding.
But Obama, who has adopted an increasingly populist tone to promote his jobs plan as his poll ratings languish near the lows of his presidency, said he would give Republicans "another chance to spend more time worrying about your jobs than keeping theirs." "Next week, I'm urging members of Congress to vote on putting hundreds of thousands of teachers back in the classroom, cops back on the streets and fire-fighters back on the job," he said, identifying the first piecemeal proposal he wants lawmakers to bring up. "And if they vote 'no'" on that, they'll have to tell you why."
Obama was referring to a portion of his jobs package that is seen having little chance of winning Republican support - giving billions of dollars in aid to states to prevent layoffs of teachers and support the hiring of police and fire-fighters. Obama said he wanted other elements of his plan put to a vote in coming weeks, including infrastructure spending, small-business tax breaks, preventing middle-class tax hikes from kicking in next year and extending unemployment aid.
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