President Obama is returning to what's becoming familiar territory to sell his $447 billion jobs plan, as he steps up pressure on Congress to pass the bill "immediately" despite early complaints from Republicans about his call to use tax hikes to pay for it.
The president on Tuesday will visit a school in Ohio, House Speaker John Boehner's home state and a critical electoral battleground. It's his third visit to Ohio this year, and his 15th as president.
The idea is to promote $25 billion in school modernization and infrastructure spending that's part of the jobs bill. The president has made no secret he plans on recruiting voters to press Congress to act on the package, at a time when lawmakers are at loggerheads over just about everything.
"We can't afford these same political games, not now," Obama said Monday. "So I want you to pick up the phone, I want you to send an e-mail, use one of those airplane sky writers, dust off the fax machine ... or you can just, like, write a letter."
Despite the clamoring for fresh action on job creation, Obama's bill is no shoo-in.
Republican leaders have expressed an interest in working with the president to find common ground, but were dismissive of his proposal Monday to pay for the package with tax hikes. The proposed increases, which he has pitched unsuccessfully before, would affect high-income earners, oil and gas companies and other popular targets.
A spokesman for Boehner said the bill didn't appear to be offered in the "bipartisan spirit."
House Republican Whip Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., told Fox News the GOP will look at the bill, but expressed concern about the tax hikes and what he said were recycled proposals drawn from the 2009 stimulus package.
"Paying for another stimulus on the backs of job creators in the form of tax hikes is illogical," Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said in a statement.
Asked about what might happen to a conciliatory approach to the bill, one GOP aide told Fox News: "Nothing kills bipartisanship faster than a half-trillion [dollar] tax hike."
The bulk of the payment for his bill comes from nearly $400 billion from limiting the deductions on charitable contributions and other items that wealthy people can take. There's also $40 billion from closing oil and gas loopholes, $18 billion from hiking taxes on certain income made by fund managers, and $3 billion from changing the tax treatment of corporate jets.
The jobs package would offer tax cuts for workers and employers by reducing the Social Security payroll tax. Spending elements include more money to hire teachers, rebuild schools and pay unemployment benefits. There are also tax credits to encourage businesses to hire veterans and the long-term unemployed.
Obama's top campaign strategist, David Axelrod, said Tuesday that the White House wants Congress to act on the entire bill rather than approaching it piecemeal. "We're not in a negotiation to break up the package," he said on ABC's "Good Morning America." "It's not an a la carte menu."
The White House, which has gotten burned in the past by making overly optimistic job-creation predictions, has avoided estimating how many jobs the package would create. But in an interview Monday on NBC News, Obama embraced an estimate from an outside economist, Mark Zandi of Moody's Analytics, and said the bill "could mean an additional 2 million jobs."
For Obama, some progress on the economy has become a political imperative as he approaches his re-election campaign with the economy stalled, unemployment at 9.1 percent and polls showing the public unhappy with his stewardship of the issue.
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