Senate Republicans Unmask Their Alternative Jobs Plan

The old saying goes “ask and ye shall receive.” Well, with the debate over the jobs bill, the Republicans are not quite following along with this saying. The White House has consistently asked to see their plan for jobs after continued criticism of the president’s plan. Recently, President Obama attended a press conference addressing the Republicans’ view on his plan by asking if they had any job plans of their own. The Senate Republicans then released their own jobs package plan.

“We just thought it was time to put this all in a package, and I will freely admit to you part of it is in response to the president saying we don’t have a proposal,” sad Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

Republicans announced their plan at a news conference with more than a dozen senators; however, the announcement was not fully supported. They say that “all but a handful” of Republicans were supportive, one of them including Senate Minority Leader McConnell, R-Ky.

The plan claims to create more than 5 million jobs and that it has major differences with President Obama’s American Jobs Act. The Republicans’ plan, “Jobs Through Growth Act,” is dissimilar to President Obama’s because it doesn’t seem to include one of President Obama’s proposals.

The plan consists of a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, a repeal of Obama’s health care law and financial overhaul and a complete suspension on new regulations and medical malpractice reform. Many other reforms are possible through this plan as well.

The debate is heating up and Senator McCain is not holding back the punches, but neither is Senator Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.:

“President Obama and my friends on the other side of the aisle in the Senate believe that they can create jobs through government spending,” McCain said. “We believe that we can create jobs through growth. They believe that government and spending creates jobs. We believe that business and growth creates jobs.”

In response, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., called the plan a “political fig leaf that would likely add to the deficit while doing nothing to create jobs.”

No doubt that this debate has sparked controversy between the two parties. Senator Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. called for a “jobs summit” and pleaded for some type of agreement between the parties:

“If you don’t like everything in here – and there are some things we could probably agree on; there are probably some things in his jobs bill that we could agree on – it would be helpful for this country if Republicans and Democrats were called together to see if we could find a breakthrough.”

There hasn’t been an outreach by the White House on creating a jobs bill, so the Republicans have said, but either way Senator McCain believes that “there’s been ‘pass it now’ out there on the campaign trail, and that obviously is not an outreach.”

The Republicans believe that their plan will keep Democrats interested based off their tax reform, regulatory reform and repatriation of $1.4 trillion in foreign earnings that is trapped overseas in countries where U.S.-based multinational companies do business, plus a withholding tax relief.