Obama gambles his political future on $US450bn jobs package

President Barack Obama is planning to give his American Jobs Act a Rose Garden send-off. Photo: AP

BARACK Obama was sending his $US450 billion ($A429 billion) jobs package to Congress overnight, keen to avoid any tampering by Republicans, many of whom have voiced opposition to the new stimulus action.

Desperate to reignite America's flagging recovery 14 months from next year's presidential election, Mr Obama was planning to give his American Jobs Act a Rose Garden send-off, pushing the case for the measures as necessary to drive down unemployment.

He was to be flanked at a news conference in Washington by teachers, emergency workers, small business owners and veterans, all of whom would benefit through tax breaks and federal aid for states.

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But the legislation is unlikely to pass unaltered despite the President's assurances that it would be paid for through a mix of deficit reduction, the ending of tax breaks for big corporations and the rich and tweaks to medical entitlements programs.

Several of the package's initiatives have been backed by Republicans previously, including a halving of payroll tax to 3.1 per cent for nine in 10 American businesses, and a tax holiday on added workers.

Many in the party, however, have said privately that they would prefer to reject the blueprint outright. ''Obama is on the ropes; why do we appear ready to hand him a win?'' one senior Republican aide was quoted by Politico. ''I just don't want to co-own the economy by having to tout that we passed a jobs bill that won't work or at least won't do enough.''

With political hostilities set to resume after the weekend's commemoration of the September 11 attacks, Mr Obama's jobs deal was bound to be targeted by Republicans vying for the party's 2012 nomination when they appeared in a new debate on Monday evening in Florida (today Melbourne time), sponsored by CNN and a leading tea party group, the Tea Party Express.

The debate is also expected to tease out the candidates' views further on issues such as the future of social security, the government-run pension scheme that working Americans pay into, as well as climate change, deficits and the war in Afghanistan.

Arch conservative Rick Perry has described social security as a Ponzi scheme that needs revamping, an attitude some commentators interpret as a nod to privatisation, a prospect last posed by George W. Bush but abandoned in the face of overwhelming voter rejection.

Mitt Romney, who lost his frontrunner status to the three-term Texas Governor just days after Mr Perry announced his candidacy on August 13, took issue during last week's debate in California, countering that ''under no circumstances would I ever say by any measure [Social Security's] a failure. It is working for millions of Americans, and I'll keep it working for millions of Americans.''

Entitlements programs, including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, will all be under the microscope during congressional efforts to find budget savings.