Politics

Is Obama’s plan really bipartisan?

Matthew Boyle Investigative Reporter
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President Barack Obama has continued to tout his “jobs plan” as bipartisan, though no Republicans or conservative groups have endorsed it fully yet.

To move major legislative packages through Congress, former Sen. Kit Bond — a Republican from Missouri — told The Daily Caller he’d need bipartisan support. “The people of America want compromise,” Bond said in a phone interview. “They want people to come together as Republicans and Democrats and pass something.”

But, Bond warns, the legislation still needs to solve the problem it’s created to fix. “There are many things that they [Republicans] can support in it,” Bond said. “If he [Obama] thinks he’s only going to sign something that has a lot of trash on it that’s only acceptable to him, [that’s unlikely to happen]. If it can’t get through the bipartisan Congress, a Republican House and the Democratic Senate, it isn’t a useful compromise.”

Tennessee Republican Rep. Phil Roe told TheDC that Obama’s proposals are based largely on flawed ideology, and that’s why nobody is supporting it other than labor unions and Democrats. “Right now, we’re going on three years into this recession and it isn’t getting any better,” Roe said in a phone interview. “There is an angst out there [in the country] right now, and the problem is this is really a retrial of stimulus, what we tried two years ago that didn’t work. I think that’s what’s got people concerned.”

Roe adds that new regulations are also a burden to the economy. Since Obama pledged to cut back on economically burdensome regulations, he’s halted only one — an Environmental Protection Agency effort to cut acceptable ozone levels.

Public opinion has also swung against government regulations. A new poll from The Tarrance Group found that 74 percent of all likely American voters, including majorities of Democrats, Republicans and independents, believe businesses and consumers are over-regulated.

The survey also showed that 47 percent of voters believe government regulations directly cause job losses, and 70 percent of voters think new regulations force companies to move jobs overseas.

The Tarrance Group survey found that 78 percent of voters nationwide oppose the National Labor Relations Board’s ongoing case against The Boeing Company. The NLRB is accusing Boeing of unfair labor practices for opening a new production line in South Carolina, a Right to Work state, instead of in Washington state, where many of its other operations are located. The International Association of Machinists local in Washington state alleges that Boeing opened the new line in South Carolina as retribution against the union, even though more jobs have been created in both states as a result of Boeing’s move.

Fred Wszolek of the Workforce Fairness Institute told TheDC that if President Obama really wanted a bipartisan plan to move the economy forward and create jobs, he should be offering to cut regulations. Wszolek said Obama needs to act now, and stop all his administration’s new rules and regulations.

“If the President is looking for a bipartisan plan to get the economy moving, he needs to look no further than ending the regulatory blitz coming from his own administration,” Wszolek said. “It is striking that even a majority of Democrats think the Obama administration has over-regulated our economy. And the best place to start correcting this mistake is at the National Labor Relations Board.”

Whether Obama is willing to compromise is a different story.

Roe, who has one of the most bipartisan pieces of legislation in the House right now, hopes the president will agree that spending more taxpayer money doesn’t stimulate the economy in the long term. Eleven Democrats have signed onto Roe’s bill aimed at repealing Obamacare’s Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), and he said that’s because he’ll meet “one on one, and sit down with people” to explain why his plan is better than IPAB.

Roe said it’ll be difficult for the president to garner bipartisan support for what’s documented as not having solved the same problems before. He adds that it’s not just Democrats who’ve made the mistake of spending more to try to create more demand in the economy; Republicans did it too, most recently at the end of George W. Bush’s presidency.

“This is not Stimulus Number Two,” Roe said. “Remember, Bush tried this too. In the spring of 2008, we tried that stimulus. Then, President Obama tried it again in January and February of 2009 and now we are back again? How many times do you have to run off left tackle and not gain any yardage until you try something else?”

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