WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama will lay out a jobs package worth more than $300 billion on Thursday, staking his re-election hopes on a call for urgent bipartisan action to revive the faltering economy.
With his poll numbers sliding to new lows amid voter frustration with 9.1 percent unemployment, Obama will make tax cuts for middle-class households and businesses the centerpiece of the plan and will press for new spending to repair roads, bridges and other deteriorating infrastructure.
He will use his televised speech before a joint session of the U.S. Congress, at 7 p.m. EDT, to urge passage of those measures by year-end. He is expected to speak for 45 minutes.
If congressional Republicans reject his remedies, his strategy will be to paint them as obstructionists and blame them for the stagnating economy.
Stubbornly high unemployment has heightened fears that the economy could be headed for another recession. Net employment growth registered zero in August as a budget standoff in Washington and the European debt crisis spooked businesses and consumers.
Obama is under intense pressure to change perceptions that he has shown weak leadership. His economic stewardship has been criticized by both Republicans and fellow Democrats, casting a cloud over his prospects for re-election in November 2012.
“It’s a major leadership moment for Obama,” said Terry Madonna, a political scientist at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. “He’s running out of months before voters settle in on whether his presidency has failed.”
Democratic officials familiar with the President’s plan told NBC News that most of Obama’s plan consisted of measures that had been supported by Republicans and Democrats in the past.
They said no one would be left in any doubt that the plan would help the middle class and boost growth quickly.
However the officials also told NBC that the unemployment rate was not going to fall suddenly.
They rejected the idea that the speech would be make or break for the president, but said it was important, both for Obama and the United States.
The officials told NBC that they did not think the U.S. was going into a double dip recession, but that action was needed to help the economy, which they accepted was weaker than it should be.
The sources, referring to the debt ceiling debate that brought America to the brink of default, said politicians had to stop making unforced errors that increased the country’s economic problems.
They complained that the Republican party seemed to oppose any idea put forward by Obama, simply because he came up with it, suggesting they would argue over his assessment of the weather.
Obama’s chief campaign strategist, David Axelrod, said the president won’t start with ideas that have been “preapproved” by Republicans in Congress.
“Ultimately, the test for any of these ideas: Are they right? Can they help the economy? Can they help get people back to work?” Axelrod told The Associated Press.
