In call with Obama, Boehner defends GOP jobs effort
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President Obama and House Speaker John A. Boehner are talking again.
Obama called Boehner (R-Ohio) on Thursday to congratulate him on passage of trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama that Congress ratified this week. The pacts were approved with wide bipartisan majorities, an unusual occurrence in this partisan divided Congress.
But comity lasts only so long.
According to the speaker’s office, Boehner took the president to task for having suggested that the GOP had yet to produce a jobs plan. Republicans in the Senate blocked the president’s job creation proposal this week, and House Republicans have declined to bring it to a vote.
“I want to make sure you have all the facts,” Boehner told the president.
The speaker reminded the president -- as he reminded the media earlier in the day -- that House Republicans had put forward the Plan for America’s Job Creators in May.
That 10-page plan is not a package of legislation as much as a broad outline of policies Republicans believe would promote growth: Reduce regulations, lower taxes, produce domestic energy.
Some, including the trade bills that prompted the phone call, have become law.
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