Congress, Barack Obama Jobs Plan | featured news

A united Senate emphatically approved legislation Thursday intended to help unemployed veterans and companies doing business with the government, endorsing a measure that includes the first small slice of President Barack Obama's jobs plan that is likely to become law....

Senate Democrats proposed Friday tax incentives for businesses hiring veterans as well as job training for all service members leaving the military. The measure was unveiled as the next piece in President Obama's jobs bill and as a remedy to unemployment among veterans.

Republicans in the Senate Thursday dealt President Barack Obama the third in a string of defeats on his stimulus-style jobs agenda, blocking a $60 billion measure for building and repairing infrastructure like roads and rail lines.

It's not just Republicans who are blocking President Obama's jobs bill. Two Senate Democrats -- Jon Tester of Montana and Ben Nelson of Nebraska -- also opposed Obama on a procedural vote this week, and other Democrats have also raised questions about the $447 billion American Jobs Act.

A large group of Senate Republicans unveiled a jobs bill Thursday, saying they were tired of hearing President Obama assert they had not put forward a plan to spur hiring and jump-start the economy.

Even if Congress heeds President Barack Obama's demands to "pass this bill right away" and enacts his jobs and tax plan in its entirety, the unemployment rate probably still would hover in nosebleed territory for at least three more years.

House Republican leaders came out against nearly all the major proposals in President Obama's $447 billion job-creation plan Friday, inluding ...

President Obama held up a newly printed copy of his $447 billion American Jobs Bill today at the White House and demanded that Congress "immediately" pass it "to put people back to work." "No games, no politics, no delays," Obama said during a Rose Garden ceremony featuring a variety of workers he said would benefit from the legislation. "I'm sending this bill to Congress today, and they ought to pass it immediately."

President Barack Obama will take to the Rose Garden on Monday to make a pitch for his jobs creation plan and announce he is sending it to Congress later that evening, the White House said.

Markets declined on Friday in the wake of President Obama’s jobs speech that added to the uncertainty already weighing on global markets over the euro zone.