Politics

Obama jobs bill now has two co-sponsors: Pelosi and Hoyer

Nicholas Ballasy Senior Video Reporter
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After nearly four weeks languishing in lonely obscurity, President Barack Obama’s jobs bill has attracted two co-sponsors, The Daily Caller has learned. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer have both signed on.

TheDC reported on September 27 that Democrat Caucus Chairman John Larson of Connecticut introduced the bill “at the request of the President” on September 21 with no co-sponsors. A senior democratic aide told TheDC that Democrats “weren’t chasing co-sponsors.”’

On October 13, however, Pelosi and Hoyer had both added their names as co-sponsors.

After the jobs bill failed in the Senate on October 11, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia criticized the Democrats the next day for failing to get any co-sponsors on the House and Senate versions of the legislation.

“The Senate’s action last night proved that the month long campaign that the White House has been on to promote the president’s bill failed and it demonstrated as well that the President could not even get the necessary support in his own party to pass the bill,” Cantor said.

“I think we see in the House as well, as of last week, the chief sponsor of the president’s bill put the bill in at request, by request which does not indicate a wholehearted support of the bill. At the end of the last week there weren’t any democratic co-sponsors on the president’s bill.”

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Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr. told TheDC on October 12 that he was unaware the legislation had no-cosponsors, and offered to sign on as one.

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“I have no problem becoming a co-sponsor of the bill,” he said during an interview in his Capitol Hill office. “I didn’t realize John [Larson] was actually carrying the bill until you just mentioned it. If the chairman of the Democratic caucus offers a bill, for the most part, the chairman of the caucus is speaking on behalf of the caucus.”

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