Boehner, House GOP Push Piece-Meal Approach to Jobs Legislation

After the Senate failed to move forward on President Obama’s “American Jobs Act” Tuesday evening, House Speaker John Boehner is once again calling on the president and Congressional Democrats to help pass individual proposals within the package that both political parties agree will aide job creation.

“The Senate acted yesterday in a bipartisan manner to reject the president’s tax increase on job creators in our country,” Boehner, R-Ohio, told reporters today. “Now I think it’s time for both parties to work together to help create a better environment for job growth in our country.”

With the House of Representatives poised to pass three free trade agreements later today, Boehner reminded reporters that House Republicans outlined areas of common agreement within the president’s doomed jobs package almost a month ago, and they’ll continue pressing forward to enact those issues – starting with the FTAs.

“The fact that we’re moving the three free trade bills today for Panama, Colombia, South Korea, is an area of common ground that we have worked together and I would hope that these bills would pass today both in the House and in the Senate,” Boehner added. “Not everything the president outlined is something that we agree with. Certainly not everything that we’ve outlined is something the president would agree with, but our job on behalf of the American people is to find common ground and to do our best for them, and we will continue to do that.”

Majority Leader Eric Cantor said that the defeated vote “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.”

“We see in the House as well, as of last week, the chief sponsor of the president’s bill put the bill in ‘by request,’ which does not indicate a wholehearted support of the bill. At the end of last week there weren’t any Democratic cosponsors of the President’s bill,” Cantor, R-Va., said. “The president’s bill does not have the bipartisan support needed to pass, because we believe that it is contrary to what is needed right now to help small businesses grow.”

When a reporter pointed out that the Senate-passed China Currency reform bill has bipartisan support in the House, Boehner reiterated his opposition to the bill and said “there’s been a lot of progress made in dealing with this issue.” “I understand that the people are concerned about the value of China’s currency. Frankly, I’m concerned about it as well,” Boehner said. “What I don’t believe is appropriate is for the Congress of the United States to take this issue up and to do it within a legislative form.”

Boehner then called on President Obama to reveal whether he supports the measure, as the president has remained unusually mum on the issue, and said “it’s time for the president to lead.”

“I’ve made my position pretty clear that I’ve got grave concerns about this bill, and while the president’s out campaigning instead of governing, it’d be nice for the president of the United States to make clear what his position is on this China currency bill,” Boehner said. “Given the volatility in the world markets, given the uncertainty about the world economy, for the Congress of the United States to be taking this step at this moment in time poses a very severe risk of a trade war, and unintended consequences that could come as a result.”

Instead of voting on the Senate’s bill, Rep. Dave Camp, the chairman of the Ways and Means committee, announced that he will hold a hearing “on a number of issues facing our trade relations with China” later this month.

“We’re going to look at a number of issues including intellectual property, indigenous innovation,” Camp, R-Mich., said. “We have a complex relationship with China, an important relationship with China…but we’re going to take a multifaceted, thoughtful approach and we’re going to have testimony before the committee on this issue.”