Joe Lieberman voted against the $35 billion package, which was blocked on Thursday. Senate blocks $35B hiring bill

President Barack Obama’s jobs agenda hit another roadblock in the Senate on Thursday night, as the two parties remained locked in a bitter stalemate with the economy sputtering and tens of millions looking for work.

In their first attempt to advance individual pieces of the president’s sprawling American Jobs Act, Democrats fell short of the 60 votes needed to move forward a $35 billion package for states and localities to hire and prevent the layoffs of teachers and first responders.


A united GOP Conference, along with three members of the Senate Democratic Caucus — Sens. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) — voted 50-50 to block a debate on the package, which would have been funded by a 0.5 percent surtax on those earning more than $1 million.

“It seems all we care about is scoring political points to be used in the next election,” said Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.). “Shame on us if the blame game is the best thing that we can do.”

The vote is another blow to Obama’s jobs agenda, as he struggles to find a new antidote to the economy after nearly four years of an unprecedented push by Washington that has so far failed to lead to a sustained recovery. And as the economic problems dominate his presidential campaign, the president has struggled to find consensus in a gridlocked Capitol, including in the Democratic-controlled Senate where the $35 billion plan garnered one fewer Democratic vote than his $447 billion proposal.

The Senate on Thursday night also rejected by a 57-43 vote a separate portion of the president’s jobs bill, pushed by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), eliminating a much-criticized rule allowing federal and local agencies to withhold 3 percent of payments to contractors.

Ten Democrats, which included a mix of moderates and those up for reelection, voted for the McConnell amendment, but 60 votes were needed to break a Democratic-led filibuster.

“It turns out there is a very sensible provision in the president’s second stimulus bill that would help businesses across the country,” McConnell said late Thursday night.

But the $11.6 billion plan included cuts of $30 billion aimed at discretionary spending programs that would have been identified by the White House Office of Management and Budget, which opposed the measure on those grounds, saying such cuts would lead to a “serious disruption in a range of services.”

“This is nothing more than a misdirected stunt by my friend, the Republican leader,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said on the floor. “The provision will be repealed but it should be done the right way.”

The House is expected to take up a proposal slashing the so-called withholding provision next week, and Senate Democrats said they had their own measure as well that would be offset with higher taxes on oil and gas companies and eliminating certain foreign tax credits.

Repealing the withholding provision and pumping aid into states are two pieces of the much-larger $447 billion jobs plan Obama has advocated in a campaign-style, cross-country tour. The package consists of new spending on infrastructure to repair roads and bridges, new funding for school construction, incentives for companies to hire unemployed and out-of-work veterans and provide payroll tax breaks for employees. All of which would be paid for by a surtax on wealthy families.

But the failure of the two proposals Thursday night showed how heavy of a lift it will be for the president to declare victory on any single economic measure.

In a sharply worded statement, Obama attacked the Senate GOP for voting in unison to stop his proposal.

“For the second time in two weeks, every single Republican in the United States Senate has chosen to obstruct a bill that would create jobs and get our economy going again,” he said. “That’s unacceptable.”

In the run-up to the Thursday votes, both sides angrily traded charges that the other was engaged in pure political gamesmanship. Democrats said Republicans were “rooting” for the economy to fail to hurt Obama’s reelection chances, while the GOP said the White House and Democratic leaders were advancing policies with poison pills with no chance of clearing Congress in an attempt to pass on the blame for a bad economy.

The end-result left the two sides no closer to a deal, with the economy threatening to fall back into recession, the housing market struggling and some 24 million Americans either out of work or underemployed.

Last week, the president’s American Jobs Act failed by nine votes to overcome a Republican-led filibuster, when a united GOP Conference and two moderate Democrats — Montana Sen. Jon Tester and Nebraska’s Nelson — prevented the plan from even coming for debate, arguing it spent too much with uncertain results to the economy.

As a result, lawmakers from both parties have tried to carve out pieces of the sprawling package. On their first attempt at moving a piece of the jobs agenda, Democrats tried to advance the $35 billion state aid package, saying it would protect the jobs of 400,000 educators and thousands more first responders.

“I expect full accountability for every penny of taxpayer dollar that we spend,” said Tester, who faces a tough reelection next year, but voted to break the filibuster even though he opposed the underlying bill. “I expect that when you invest in something, you get what you pay for.”

Other moderate Democrats, like Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia, also voted to break the filibuster but opposed the plan on its merits for injecting too much cash into short-term public sector jobs.

Webb, in particular, was miffed about the proposal to tax ordinary income, saying on the floor last week that taxes should be increased on capital gains instead.

Giving Republicans additional ammunition was Reid himself, who said earlier this week that the private sector is doing “just fine.”

“It’s become increasingly clear to many Americans that Democrats in Washington have lost all sense of balance when it comes to the size and the scope of the federal government in Washington,” McConnell said on the floor.

The failure of the packages highlights Washington’s struggles to cope with two ongoing crises whose goals can sometimes conflict: Reining in a national debt that stands north of $14 trillion and creating jobs for the tens of millions looking for work.

And the joint problems have been clear since the final year of George W. Bush’s administration, when Congress and the White House enacted the $124 billion stimulus legislation, a $158 billion tax cut package and the $700 billion bailout of the financial sector.

During Obama’s time in office, there’s been the $821 billion economic stimulus package, the $3 billion law creating the Cash for Clunkers program to boost auto sales, a $26 billion law last year also aimed at hiring educators, and an $858 billion law extending all the Bush-era tax cuts.

After Obama took office in 2009, Congress enacted the $821 billion economic stimulus package and a $3 billion law, creating the Cash for Clunkers program to bolster auto sales. And in 2010, Congress enacted a $26 billion law that also was targeted at hiring teachers and other public-sector workers. In addition to that, Obama signed into law an $858 billion bipartisan proposal in December to extend the Bush-era tax cuts for all income tax brackets.

While proponents say the action helped stabilize the economy, the unemployment rate stands at 9.1 percent.

Next week, the Senate is on recess, and will return at the beginning of next month with major deadlines approaching: Nov. 18 to fund the government and avoid a shutdown and Nov. 23 for the powerful deficit-slashing committee to find an agreement of $1.2 trillion in cuts.

In the meantime, Democrats want to move additional pieces of the president’s jobs agenda, including incentives for hiring, pumping money into infrastructure and extending the payroll tax.

It’s far from clear whether any will pass.