Republican Rep. Virginia Foxx of North Carolina, a member of the House Rules Committee, said on the House floor that Congress did not pass President Barack Obama’s jobs bill because his own party “did not want to support” the plan.
Foxx added that the bill was filed by “request” of the President, as first reported by The Daily Caller on September 27.
“The reason the President’s so-called jobs bill has not been passed in this House is because the Democrats did not support it. It was introduced by request,” Foxx said Tuesday on the House floor.
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“We will work with the president when he comes up with ideas that work,” she said, “but so far his proposals have not worked. Notice the stimulus bill that he asked us to pass that would not raise unemployment above 8 percent. He wants to raise taxes on job creators and all it will do is destroy private sector jobs.”
Although the legislation initially did not attract any co-sponsors in both chambers, on Oct. 13 House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer signed on as its first and only co-sponsors to date.
The GOP-controlled House did not vote on the legislation, but it failed in the Democrat-controlled Senate on Oct 11. Two Democratic senators, John Tester of Montana and Ben Nelson of Nebraska, joined Republicans in voting against the plan. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid voted “no” so the legislation could be reconsidered in the future.
President Obama has blamed Republicans for preventing Congress from passing the legislation.
“Republicans in the Senate blocked a jobs bill from moving forward, a bill that would have meant nearly 400,000 teachers, firefighters and first responders being back on the job,” he said Monday in Nevada.