(Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)



Top Republicans in the House and Senate put the kibosh Tuesday on President Obama's plan to pay for a $447 billion jobs bill by closing tax loopholes and ending tax credits benefiting wealthy Americans. But the fine print in Obama's jobs bill actually treats the tax increases as an enforcement mechanism -- a trigger -- and the jury's still out on whether they'll accept the actual pay-for in the jobs bill, which tasks the joint deficit Super Committee with finding the offsets. "The half-trillion dollar tax hike the White House proposed yesterday will not only face a tough road in Congress among Republicans, but from Democrats too," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said on the Senate floor Tuesday morning. At a press conference at RNC headquarters, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) echoed this view.

As Beutler points out, under the American Jobs Act, the tax loopholes and tax credits would only be eliminated if the deficit Super Committee fails to achieve at least $1.65 trillion in deficit reduction. So even if Congress passed the bill without changing a word, it's possible that the tax loopholes and credits that Boehner and McConnell are so desperate to defend could remain in place.

In and of itself, the fact that Boehner and McConnell are so focused on protecting tax giveaways tells you a lot about their priorities. But this isn't just a simple case of them wanting to protect special tax breaks; this is a case in which they are literally putting the interests of the people who get those tax breaks ahead of the interests of the people who are desperate to find a job.

McConnell and Boehner would love to turn this into a debate about long-term fiscal policy and relive the glory days of the debt limit fight, but that's really not what the jobs bill is about. It's about growing the economy and putting people to work. That should be the top item on their agenda. Not having yet another fight about how to pay for it in the future, especially when the single best way to get our fiscal house in order is to get the economy moving again.