Durbin says Obama’s jobs bill will likely need changes for Congress to pass

President Obama’s jobs bill will likely need to be changed in order to win enough votes for passage, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said Tuesday. 

Durbin said Democrats are still working to round up votes in the Senate for the $447 billion plan, but said the final proposal probably won’t be a carbon copy of the one Obama proposed in September. 

{mosads}“We’re also going to work on the number of votes to support it,” Durbin said Tuesday in a conference call. “It may not be the exact plan presented by the president.” 

Durbin said last week that there aren’t enough votes to pass Obama’s American Jobs Act, but said there eventually will be.

House Republicans have already declared the president’s bill dead on arrival in their chamber, and said they will move forward only with pieces of it.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) has chided the president for taking an “all or nothing” approach to the bill, saying it’s “unacceptable” for the president to ask Congress to pass his legislation as written.

Obama on Monday asked Congress to hold a vote on his bill by the end of October. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) promised the Senate would take up the jobs legislation this month. 

The plan calls for an extension of the employee payroll-tax cut, added infrastructure spending, additional unemployment insurance benefits and the establishment of a national infrastructure bank. 

The bill also proposes ending tax breaks and closing loopholes on big oil companies. Those provisions might be a tough sell for vulnerable Senate Democrats who fear being tagged as voting for tax increases during their reelection campaigns.