ROCK ISLAND, Ill. — President Obama plans to make a major speech in early September laying out new proposals for job creation and taming the federal debt, according to the White House.
Obama is expected to make fresh proposals, possibly including tax cuts and new infrastructure spending, to spur hiring.
The president will also lay out a plan to trim far more from the federal debt than the $1.5 trillion target of a congressional “supercommittee” that is supposed to issue a proposal for Congress by Thanksgiving, the White House said. The plan is likely to include proposals for an overhaul of the tax code and entitlements.
The speech will be given right after Labor Day and is likely to contain a mix of tax cuts to create jobs, new infrastructure spending and measures targeting the long-term unemployed and specific sectors of the economy in need. The venue has not yet been chosen, and the mix of proposals to be included is still being decided, a senior administration official said.
White House press secretary Jay Carney said Obama’s plan will consist of two separate proposals — one aimed at creating jobs and the other at reducing the deficit. The deficit-reduction plan would be delivered to the 12-member bipartisan supercommittee.
“In early September, we will put forward proposals for jobs creating ideas and economic growth ideas,” Carney said on MSNBC’s “The Daily Rundown” show Wednesday morning. “We want to be aggressive with deficit reduction that helps pay for things you need to do in the near term to grow the economy.”
Carney added that the president sees his latest jobs plans as “a continuation” of the efforts he has made to boost the economy since taking office.
“When he was sworn into office, the economy was hemorrhaging jobs,” Carney said. “We’re digging out of the hole. The economy has been growing, but too slowly. . . . We are doing things to keep growing the economy.”
Obama has said he hopes that his Republican adversaries in Congress hear from their constituents about the need for Congress to compromise with the White House on the new proposals.
“One of the reasons it’s so good and important to be out in Iowa and in the country is to hear from folks who are fed up with Washington’s inability to act,” Carney said of Obama’s three-day Midwestern bus tour. “They just want things done. . . . It requires compromise, and the president has demonstrated his ability to compromise.”
Word of the planned speech comes on the final day of Obama’s tour, which on Tuesday brought him through the idyllic landscapes of rural Iowa, armed with several measures that he said would boost the economy there. On Wednesday, Obama headed to western Illinois to host town halls in Atkinson and Alpha.
Obama’s proposals will include new spending on jobs but will also attempt to pay for that spending later on through ambitious deficit reduction, the administration official said.
The president’s economic team has been working on the package since the end of the debt-ceiling debate earlier this month. After the early September speech, Obama is expected to continue to advance new economic ideas.
