From The Associated Press
An excerpt from recent editorials in newspapers in the United States:
On needed bipartisan congressional action:
Does President Barack Obama truly believe in bipartisan congressional action, as he repeatedly says? Support by both parties of a new jobs bill will test the president's commitment, because the bill is an alternative to one he has put forward.
"We want to work with the Republicans," Senate majority leader Harry Reid said, "and it appears to me, on the jobs program, they want to work with us."
ADVERTISEMENT
The measure would extend unemployment benefits for those whose payments have run out. It also would include tax breaks for employers who hire jobless workers, a feature that Republicans support.
That differs from a plan the president has proposed, a tax cut of up to $5,000 for each new worker that employers hire.
Supporters say the bipartisan plan is cheaper, simpler and less vulnerable to abuse than Obama's.
The president has repeatedly chastised Congress for its all-or-nothing approach to politics.
"We're unable to listen to one another, to have at once a serious and civil debate," he said at a prayer breakfast recently. "One side is either always right or always wrong when, in reality, neither side has a monopoly on truth."
Obama is, for one thing, a master politician, schooled in the hard-knocks tradition of Chicago politics.
So here's a two-party effort that challenges his proposal. Let's see what he says about it.
-- The Paris (Tenn.)Post-Intelligencer
