House Passes Job Bill

On Thursday the House of Representatives passed a measure, one that is part of President Obama’s jobs package that is designed to repeal an IRS withholding tax. This is one of the few measures in President Obama’s $447 billion initiative that members of the Republican Party in congress have actually agreed to support.

The measure is designed to remove a requirement that the government holds onto three percent of the payments made to contractors who do work for them. This fee, which was traditionally held in case the contractor over charged the government for their services.

If all goes according to plan than the Senate will also pass the bill sometime within the next week. Though this is a small step in the right direction for bi-partisan progress on tackling a real issue that is crippling this nation the sanguine feelings were out the door before you could count to three. Both representative from the White House and the Republican Party issued statements about how pleased they were to be able to work together towards a common goal, then they resumed the blame games and finger pointing that have become the hallmarks of recent American politics. So, don’t expect to see a flood of progress from the jobs-related measures when it needs bipartisan action.

Of course, they all wanted a chance to get in the spotlight, basically for doing their jobs and getting a law passed. One of the first to jump into the spotlight was House Speaker John Boehner, he released the following statement, “We owe it to the American people to find common ground. Repealing this tax is another step in that effort in finding common ground.”

After patting himself on the back for their current efforts he then felt the need to go on and tell us more about their previous efforts to do something besides talk at each other for a while. Then he took a shot at the president, after promoting a set of 15 bills that republicans created, dubbed the forgotten 15, and urged for them to be passed with this statement, “The president says ‘we can’t wait’ to take action on jobs, and I agree. Mr. President, help us with the United States Senate to pass these bipartisan, common-sense bills that will get our economy moving once again.'”

Sadly, since he did not provide any real information about the bills that could help his constitutes to decide if they believe that the bills are a good thing or not.

That is not to say that representative from the Democratic Party did not take their shots as well. In a statement released by Jay Carney, the White House Press Secretary, the following was said about the president “He is working with Republicans cooperatively on the things they agree on,” he then went on to add tat the GOP agenda has “very few ideas that have any measurable positive impact in the near term on economic growth and job creation. That’s not just me saying it… That’s outside economic analysts.”