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Democrats on the supercommittee have proposed that the savings from the end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan be used to pay for a new stimulus package, according to a summary of the $2.3 trillion plan obtained by The Hill. The latest offer from Democrats on the deficit panel, made Monday night to their Republican counterparts, would use some of the war savings to help pay for spending on infrastructure. The budget savings from ending the wars are estimated to total around $1 trillion over a decade, according to an estimate in July from the Congressional Budget Office. The...

Senate votes down Obama jobs measure By Josiah Ryan - 11/03/11 03:26 PM ET For the third time in four weeks, Senate Republicans on Thursday voted in unison to block a piece of President Obama's jobs package. The GOP senators were joined by one Democrat, Sen. Ben Nelson (Neb.), and Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman (Conn.) in rejecting a procedural motion on legislation that would spend $60 billion on transportation infrastructure programs. The vote was 51-49. The spending was offset with a new tax on income earned above $1 million that Republicans oppose. Many Republicans, including Sen. Jeff Sessions (Ala.), said...

President Obama has been no stranger to the Occupy Wall Street crowd and in fact has gone out of his way to encourage the violent, vile, unsanitary, vitriolic and greedy movement. But, this week Obama took it to a whole new level, dedicating half of his weekly address to vilifying the "top 1 percent," while claiming the middle class has been losing ground as "the rich become richer." His message this week is purely "spread the wealth around." Like I've said before, if Obama is going to continue to support the OWS crowd, he better be willing to accept the...

DAVID GREGORY: Good morning. The first snow storm of the winter makes an early fall landing, blanketing the east coast from Maryland to New England, leaving more than two million homes without power. This is how it's going to look a couple of months from now in Iowa when the caucuses are underway. And this morning we have a clear snapshot of how the Republican field now stands. In the new Des Moines Register poll, Herman Cain and Mitt Romney are on top. Back in Washington, the president focused on his own reelection and the need to jumpstart the economy...

Old and busted: Jobs “saved or created.” New hotness: Jobs “supported.” In attempting to advance the argument for Barack Obama’s new jobs stimulus plan, the White House has decided to create a new term that has, er, even less meaning than their previous measure: The American Jobs Act Will Support Nearly 400,000 Education Jobs—Preventing Layoffs and Allowing Thousands More to Be Hired or Rehired: The President’s plan will more than offset projected layoffs, providing support for nearly 400,000 education jobs—enough for states to avoid harmful layoffs and rehire tens of thousands of teachers who lost their jobs over the past...

Even though the United States Senate on Tuesday blocked President Obama's jobs bill, the legislation's specifics -- as well as the idea of taxing the wealthy to pay for it -- are popular with the American public, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. When asked simply if Congress should pass the legislation or not, 30 percent of respondents answer yes, while 22 percent say no; 44 percent have no opinion.

Nancy Pelosi refuses to use the word "stimulus" to describe the president's "American Jobs Act." But when asked today to name significant differences between the Jobs Act and the 2009 stimulus package, Pelosi didn't identify any... "Without the Recovery Act and accompanying federal interventions, whether from the Fed, or Cash for Clunkers, or other initiatives, the unemployment rate last year at the time of the election would have been fourteen and a half percent, not nine and a half percent," said Minority Leader Pelosi. ....

President Obama has made ending the Bush tax on incomes above $250,000 a year a top goal of his presidency. Republicans have predictably fought him at every turn, and used misleading statistics to characterize the plan as one that would cripple small businesses -- when in fact only sliver of the impact would fall on truly small businesses. Wednesday, those Republicans got a big, if unintentional, assist from Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) -- a member of Democratic leadership, who has been a leading advocate for setting the threshold at $1 million in income. "There are people making 250, 300 [thousand...

Buffett: My plan was not the 'Buffett Rule' By Alicia M. Cohn - 09/30/11 11:01 AM ET Billionaire investment guru Warren Buffett, who has become the face of President Obama's $447 billion jobs creation legislation, said Friday that he might not agree with everything in the bill. Obama has called for higher tax rates on millionaires as part of his proposed deficit-reduction plan. Obama’s proposed tax increase, called the “Buffett Rule” in a nod to Buffett’s call for higher taxes on the wealthiest Americans, would apply to those earning annual incomes of $1 million or more. However, Buffett said he...

Last week, in the wake of President Obama’s jobs speech, I wrote that the president seemed poised to campaign for re-election on an essentially centrist policy agenda: A short-term payroll tax stimulus, a plan for tax reform that would close loopholes while lowering corporate rates, and a long-term plan for deficit reduction modeled on the grand bargain that the White House and John Boehner were supposedly close to striking during the debt ceiling negotiations. The president’s goal in 2012, I suggested, would be to try to paint himself as the moderate bipartisan grownup, and dismiss the Republicans as extreme, intransigent,...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. hospital and drug industries lashed out at provisions of President Barack Obama's deficit reduction plan that would saddle them with more than $200 billion in federal healthcare spending cuts. Lobbyists vowed to fight proposals for Medicare, which covers the elderly, that are aimed at saving $135 billion on prescriptions by requiring drugmakers to provide steeper rebates similar to those for Medicaid, which covers the poor.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama makes it sound like there are millionaires all over America paying taxes at lower rates than their secretaries. "Middle-class families shouldn't pay higher taxes than millionaires and billionaires," Obama said Monday. "That's pretty straightforward. It's hard to argue against that."

<p>It's not just millionaires who'd pay more under President Obama's latest plan to combat the deficit.</p> <p>Air travelers, federal workers, military retirees, wealthier Medicare beneficiaries and people taking out new mortgages are among those who would pay more than $130 billion in government revenues raised through new or increased fees.</p>

The president has taken to the campaign trail to promote his "American Jobs Act." That's a good name for it: an act. "Pass this bill now!" he declared 24 times at a stop in Raleigh, N.C., and another 18 in Columbus, Ohio, and the act is sufficiently effective that, three years into the Vapidity of Hope, the president can still find crowds of true believers willing to chant along with him: "Pass this bill now!" Not all supporters are content merely to sing along with the prompter-in-chief. In North Carolina, a still devoted hopeychanger cried out, "I love you!" "I...

Applications for unemployment benefits continued to rise in the past week, while inflation pushed higher and a key manufacturing index weakened. Getty Images The weekly jobless claims number, which is closely watched as an indicator for employment trends, unexpectedly rose 11,000 to 428,000, well ahead of estimates of 411,000. The consumer price index, meanwhile, gained 0.4 percent when including volatile food and energy prices, after an increase of 0.5 percent in July. The so-called core CPI, though, gained 0.2 percent, which was in line with expectations. Consumers paid more for a range of goods and services last month, pushing up...

WASHINGTON (AP) — In a sharp challenge to the GOP, President Barack Obama proposed paying for his costly new jobs plan Monday with tax hikes that Republicans have already emphatically rejected. The reception to his new proposal was no more welcoming, setting the stage for a likely new fight with Congress. Flanked at the White House by workers he said the legislation would help, Obama declared, "This is the bill that Congress needs to pass. No games. No politics. No delays." He sent it to Capitol Hill saying, "The only thing that's stopping it is politics."

Time for President Obama to wake up and look like he’s doing something about jobs again! Today, he’ll take to the Rose Garden with “teachers, police officers, firefighters, construction workers, small business owners and veterans” —read Big Labor supporters with a few non-union tokens tossed in —as he wags his finger again at Capitol Hill to pass the jobs bill. Which, er, he’ll finally get around to sending to Capitol Hill later tonight. President Rerun will be quite busy this week, rehashing his warmed-over porkulus plan across the country. President Obama will again press Congress to pass his American Jobs...

The dismal state of the economy is the main reason many companies are reluctant to hire workers, and few executives are saying that President Obama’s jobs plan — while welcomed — will change their minds any time soon. ... As President Obama faced an uphill battle in Congress to win support even for portions of the plan, many employers dismissed the notion that any particular tax break or incentive would be persuasive. Instead, they said they tended to hire more workers or expand when the economy improved. Companies are focused on jittery consumer confidence, an unstable stock market, perceived obstacles...

President Obama laying out his proposed jobs plan to Congress Thursday night. NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Economists gave generally positive reviews to President Obama's jobs plan Friday, with some estimating that at least 1 million jobs could be added in the next year if Congress passes the package. The payroll tax holiday for workers and small businesses was cited specifically for having a relatively good "bang for the buck." And that part of the plan may have the most bipartisan support. "This additional spending capacity in the hands of consumers should continue to foster improvements in aggregate domestic demand. And...

This evening, President Obama will do more than call for job creation, he will announce he is sending legislation to Congress for quick action. “The president will unveil tonight The American Jobs Act, a plan of bipartisan ideas to create jobs right now and is fully paid for,” Communications director Dan Pfeiffer told ABC News. The final price tag is still being calculated but it could reach $400 billion, paid for by savings elsewhere in government. And it is crafted to appeal to Republicans who have control of the House, where all money bills must begin their legislative track. White...