My impression after talking to senior White House officials is that the president is going a little larger than we’ve been led to expect. I’m not authorized to give details of the plan, but I think it will be worth watching his speech because he will be making some news. Keeping in mind that the jobs plan is kind of a hybrid between actually trying to improve the economy and the jobs situation on the one hand, and scoring political points on the other, I think they’ve done a good job. We all know that the Republicans will be resistant to passing anything that helps the president, and we also know they have some pretty bizarre economic beliefs about what does and doesn’t create jobs. There are things in the proposal that are designed to appeal to Republicans and that they have supported in the past. And there are other things that the Republicans won’t support because they don’t believe they will work, or just because they’re not nice people. A third category can be described as things that are extremely hard to be against.
I believe the ideas in the president’s speech will be put into a Senate bill and it will move with Reid and Durbin’s leadership.
John Boehner will be in an interesting spot. Will he wait for Reid to pass something and send it over to the House? Or will he create his own product incorporating things he can support and then lard it up with Republican priorities that the president can’t support?
I think it might be hard to sustain a filibuster for the bill, especially since the Republicans retain substantial leverage by virtue of running the House. They don’t need to kill it by filibuster, and the Senate Republicans can pass responsibility for killing it on to the House. Why not take that path? In truth, this thing might not be killed at all. It might be more of a battle over what is and is not in the final product.
The president is going to spend the next couple of months pushing this bill, and we can either support him in those efforts or we can stand on the sidelines flinging poo.
I’ll let you make up your mind after you see the speech and learn what’s in the bill.
Below the fold, I have the video of the president’s speech embedded, so you can watch it here, starting at 7pm EST.
