President quiet on job plan details

Davenport, Iowa— After pledging to send a job-creation package to Congress next month and daring Republicans to block it, President Obama offered few specifics Tuesday about the form the plan might take as he stuck to a broad outline of how to improve the economy.


On the second day of Obama's three-day bus tour of the upper Midwest, the president worked off the blueprint he had used the day before, offering proposals such as extending a payroll tax cut, spending money to repair roads and bridges, and ratifying pending trade agreements.


And he continued to hammer away at Republicans in Congress, suggesting they stand in the way of economic growth, even as some Democrats expressed discomfort with what they saw as a potentially divisive stance.


"We could do even more if Congress is willing to get in the game," Obama said to a gathering of small-business owners, community leaders and rural development experts at a small college in Peosta, Iowa.


"There are bipartisan ideas — common-sense ideas — that have traditionally been supported by Democrats and Republicans that will put more money in your pockets, that will put our people to work, that will allow us to deal with the legacy of debt that hangs over our economy," he said.


Republicans pushed back by escalating their criticism of Obama's trip, calling it nothing more than a glorified campaign swing at taxpayer expense.


"This week taxpayers made a donation to the Obama reelection campaign. No matter what the president says, his Midwest bus tour is nothing but a campaign trip," said Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee. "He's talking about campaigning against Congress and doling out talking points, not policy plans.


But the question remains whether there will be more to the president's plan than he has detailed in public -- and whether he will throw down a gauntlet by formally submitting it to Congress, a tactic the White House has resisted in the past.


In a statement Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said Republicans were waiting to act on pending trade deals with Colombia, Panama and South Korea -- but complained the White House hasn't sent them to Capitol Hill.


"At a time when millions of Americans are out of work and businesses are looking for opportunities to hire, we must do everything we can to create an environment where jobs can come back," McConnell said.


Obama will resume town halls today in two small towns in Illinois.