Rep. Paul Ryan contends that President Barack Obama is stirring unrest with his $447 billion jobs bill instead of trying to solve the volatile issue and put Americans back to work.
“He put ideas in his jobs bill that have proven to fail,” the Wisconsin Republican said on NBC’s “Meet The Press” today.
“Instead of trying to get compromise, he’s embracing conflict,” said Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee. “He’s running around the country campaigning on a bill that he knows won’t pass.”
Also on the special “Meet the Press” broadcast from Chicago, former Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel said there is no doubt that the president faces face a stiff political battle in his re-election bid. But Emanuel, now mayor of the Windy City, stopped short of labeling the president a political underdog, as even Obama himself has done.
“There’s no doubt there’s a challenge politically because the economy is not where the American middle class family needs it to be for their bottom line,” Emanuel said.
“There is stress on people’s lives. They too need help, not a bailout, but a chance to get the economy moving for them,” Emanuel said. “And that’s an understandable sense of frustration on their part.”
As such, Emanuel sympathized with protests on Wall Street that have spread to other parts of the United States.
Emanuel said he would advise the president to focus on rebuilding America’s roads and bridges. “We have a 21st-century economy sitting on a 20th-century infrastructure,” he said.
Emanuel also took a dig at GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney on the program. “There would not be an auto industry if Mitt Romney was president,” Emanuel said. “He would have said, ‘Let it go bankrupt.’”
© 2012 Newsmax. All rights reserved.