Columbus Dispatch...
Obama’s jobs-bill pitch falls on deaf GOP ears
By Joe Hallett 
September  26, 2011 

CINCINNATI — Calling himself “a warrior for the middle class,” President Barack Obama trod on the home turf of his biggest GOP rivals yesterday and issued an in-your-face challenge to them to pass his $477 billion stimulus plan. 

With the 1960s-built, double-decker Brent Spence Bridge as a backdrop, Obama urged a cheering audience of Ohioans and Kentuckians to pressure House Speaker John Boehner of nearby West Chester and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky to move his 2-week-old American Jobs Act. 

It was Obama’s second trip to Ohio in nine days to promote a bill that he says will create hundreds of thousands of jobs while reducing most Americans’ taxes. But Republicans were quick to portray it as another campaign stop in a battleground state, saying Obama is using his second stimulus plan as a disguise for raising taxes. 

Joking that the venue for his speech — a riverfront cement-company yard below the bridge — was “ sheer coincidence,” Obama noted that Boehner and McConnell have the power to “either kill this jobs bill, or they can pass it.” 

Damning with faint praise, Obama said, “I know these men care about their states. And I can’t imagine that the speaker wants to represent a state where nearly one in four bridges is classified substandard.” 

Obama referred to McConnell’s recent comments that “roads and bridges are not partisan in Washington,” and said there is no reason for Republicans in Congress to block his jobs act. 

“Mr. Boehner, Mr. McConnell, help us rebuild this bridge,” Obama said. “Help us rebuild America. Help us put construction workers back to work. Pass this bill.” 

Obama used the Brent Spence Bridge, spanning the Ohio River, as a reason for enacting his stimulus plan, saying it would provide billions of dollars to put thousands of Americans back to work rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure. 

One of the nation’s busiest bridges, the Brent Spence carries about 150,000 vehicles a day, along with an estimated 4 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. Officials on both sides of the river say a new bridge is needed, with a current price tag of about $2.4 billion. 

McConnell and Boehner support replacing the bridge but oppose the president’s second stimulus plan. Boehner said the bridge should be funded in the federal transportation bill, but Congress has not enacted a new bill since 2009, instead authorizing eight temporary extensions to keep money flowing. 

Obama’s visit at once raised practical and political questions: Are duplicating the Brent Spence and his 2008 election performance in Ohio bridges too far for the president? 

Republicans, as expected, were ready with the same answer to both questions: Yes. 

As a practical matter, they said, money for a new expanse across the Ohio River would not be available even if Congress passes Obama’s jobs bill because it is designed to fund projects that are “shovel ready.” 

Clearing environmental and other government hurdles will put off actual construction of a new bridge until 2015, when Obama either will be three years into his second term or watching a Republican president on television. 

While he welcomed Obama’s support for a new bridge, U.S. Rep. Steve Chabot, R.-Cincinnati, told reporters that if the president were serious about funding it he would have included the money in his $787 billion stimulus program in 2009. 

“His administration has made it clear that their recent focus on the bridge is sadly no more than a political ploy to pressure Republicans into supporting yet another stimulus plan,” Chabot said. “There is nothing in the president’s plan that indicates money will be spent on the Brent Spence project.” 

White House press secretary Jay Carney later acknowledged that Obama’s jobs bill would not fund a replacement for the Brent Spence Bridge, which he said “is symbolic and representative of crumbling infrastructure across this country.” 

Obama’s Jobs Bill would invest $50 billion in road, bridge and mass-transit improvements, and it is backed by a coalition of labor, community and construction-industry groups, which say the nation is dangerously behind in fixing its estimated 69,000 structurally deficient bridges. Ohio has 318 structurally deficient bridges and another 329 rated as functionally obsolete, meaning they weren’t designed to carry current load limits and traffic flows. 

“As the president has noted, a serious effort to address the backlog of structurally deficient bridges would be an immediate source of jobs, doing working that desperately needs to be done,” said James Corless, director of Transportation for America. 

Noting the significance of Ohio in presidential elections, Republicans portrayed Obama’s visit to the state as purely political, referring to polls consistently showing that less than half the state’s voters approve of his job performance. 

“With numbers like these, it’s not surprising he continues to come to Ohio, because we all know Ohio is crucial and critical to his re-election effort,” said Rick Riley, political director for the Republican National Committee. 

The event marked the second time since Labor Day, when Vice President Joe Biden keynoted a labor union rally here, that the White House came calling on Cincinnati. The Cincinnati media market, comprising 15 percent of the Ohio vote, is reliably Republican, but Obama’s stronger-than-usual performance in the region helped him carry the state by 4.5 percentage points in 2008. He was the first Democratic presidential nominee in 44 years to win Hamilton County. 

Read it at the Columbus Dispatch