White House pushes votes on jobs act

U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday once again urged lawmakers to pass the jobs bill he proposed more than a month ago, proposing to break the bill into pieces. "There are things we can do right now to put people back to work," Obama said from his bus tour North Carolina. "There are things we should do right now to give the economy the jolt that it needs. So that's why I sent Congress the American Jobs Act." Aiming to tackle near double digit unemployment and to spur the sluggish economy, Obama laid out on Sept. 8 the American Jobs Act to provide tax cuts and credit, extend unemployment benefits and increase investment in infrastructure. But Republicans reject to pass the 447-billion-dollar bill in whole and only agreed part of the plan. "Maybe they just couldn't understand the whole thing at once, so we're going to break it up into bite-size pieces," Obama said. Obama is pitching a 35 billion dollars proposal of aid to states, one slice of his overall bill. The White House spokesman Jay Carney said the White House anticipated action "very soon."