President Proposes a Plan for Jobs

President Barack Obama spoke before a joint session of Congress last night, proposing a plan to create jobs. 

Much political ado had been made over the past week, particularly over the scheduling and the anticipated attendance of the speech.  Initially, the White House scheduled it to coincide with the Republican debate on Wednesday evening, causing no small amount of disgruntlement among Republicans, who would have had to quickly reschedule the debate, were it not for an unprecedented letter from House Speaker John Boehner to the White House, claiming that the date and time of the scheduled speech conflicted with pre-scheduled House voting.  Hence, the speech was rescheduled for last night, then rescheduled again, so as not to conflict with the first official game commencing football season.  As if tensions weren't high enough, already, some Republican Congresional representatives voiced their indifference to the media to even attending the speech, opting instead to watch the football game.  Affronted by the Republican speech-skippers indifference, Senate Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid astutely scheduled the procedural vote to disapprove the debt ceiling increase to commence immediatly after the speech.

It was then no wonder that in the preamble of the speech itself, the President referred to the "political circus" that characterizes Washington, these days.

In summary, the President's roughly $450 billion plan proposes--
--a significant reduction in employer payroll taxes, to make it cheaper for businesses to hire
--spending on infrastructure and education, to provide for construction and teaching jobs
--funds to retain teachers in budget-crunched states and retrain the long-term unemloyed, and
--a broad-based tax cut in 2012, to put more money in people's pockets.

Although stipulating that "everything in this bill will be paid for. Everything," the detail of precisely where the money to pay for the plan wasn't so clear.  The President expects to deliver that apparently minor detail to Congress next week.  At this point, it is assumed that it will be paid for with the budget cuts to be laid out by Congresses' special committee before December 31 of this year.

In regards to the delivery of the speech, notable was the President's tone, through which, he was adamant that the bill, called the "American Jobs Act" (though it's not officially an "act" until it is passed and signed), be "passed right away."  In fact, he used the phrase, "right away" eight times.

We'll let you draw your own conclusions from all that.