Posted on 06/22/2011 10:14:04 AM PDT by sunmars
Democrats in the Senate on Wednesday called on Vice President Joe Biden to include new economic stimulus spending in deficit-reduction talks as a way of lowering the 9.1 percent jobless rate that is hobbling the economic recovery.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid made the proposal to the White House, Richard Durbin, the No. 2 Democratic senator, told reporters.
"The Republicans are fixating on the budget deficit and it's a serious problem," Durbin said.
But citing the conclusions of a presidential deficit-cutting commission that he served on last year, Durbin added, "Get the recovery right before you get in this deficit cutting mode ... get people back to work. Let's start moving in that direction."
A senior Democratic aide said the job-creation idea Senate Democrats are now pursuing represented a pivot in the deficit-reduction negotiations.
He said the idea presented to the White House has three components to help create jobs: new infrastructure spending, a payroll tax cut and support for clean energy jobs.
He did not say how large the infrastructure spending proposal would be. In 2009, President Barack Obama won enactment of an $814 billion economic stimulus that Republicans opposed as wasteful spending.
The aide said the White House appeared to support extending the current payroll tax cut for employees, although there has been discussion on Capitol Hill of also expanding that tax cut to employers.
Biden is to return to the Senate on Wednesday for another meeting with the bipartisan group of lawmakers looking for ways to significantly reduce deficits. A deep cut in spending -- in the neighborhood of $4 trillion over a decade -- is a Republican requirement for allowing a vote to increase U.S. borrowing authority that is hitting up against a $14.3 trillion limit.
read on...
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
This better not happen.
i’m betting porkulus part 2 and them hoping we dont notice.
It worked so well the first time...
Only one problem - Porkulus already failed and was judged accordingly by the voters in 2010. So IMO that dog won't hunt. But it's the only play the Dems seem to know lately.
I think I feel ill. Good grief. We are going to notice.
must be another election coming up...oh wait, aah there it is.
People in hell want ice water too
This is like a medieval barber performing a bloodletting on someone dying of anemia.
yup, the playbook is obvious, thats why its coming from the Senate lot, they are electioneering no matter what it does to the economy.
If they’re so hell-bent on stimulating the economy....how about cutting taxes on the rich....and offsetting it by raising taxes on the poor? The poor don’t pay their fair share, but they get ALL of the benefits!!
If the original Porkulus didn’t work, why do they think that Round Two will work???????
This wont go anywhere. The Donks already had their spending spree and look where it got us, NO WHERE BUT IN MORE DEBT.
I would not be surprised to see the dems make a part of an ignorant proposal like this stimulis checks like Bush did.
They are rotten to the core.
Why haven't they tried those ideas before? Oh, wait . . .
Senate Democrats, “Lets spend our way to prosperity”.
This was tried and failed going all the way back to FDR.
The best ‘economic STIMULUS’ is if we got rid of the entire Senate for 2 years!
Typical libtards... tripling down on stupid.
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