White House expects Senate votes on jobs bill elements soon

White House spokesman Jay Carney said Monday that the administration expects the Senate to take up elements of President Obama’s Jobs Act very soon.

The entire $447 billion tax cut and stimulus measure, paid for by a surtax on millionaires, died in the Senate last Tuesday after it failed to get 60 votes.

{mosads}”We are confident that Senator Reid will be able to say something about the scheduling of a vote in the relatively near future,” Carney said aboard Air Force One, according to a pool report.

He said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is set to schedule a vote on $35 billion in assistance to states and localities to prevent teacher layoffs.

Over the last few days, the GOP has complained that President Obama continues to say that Republicans do not have a jobs plan, even though both the Senate and House GOP caucuses have anti-regulation and anti-tax packages they say will create jobs.

“It is unfortunate but true that though the Republicans have put forward … economic plans, they have not put forward a plan that would in any way have a measurably positive impact on economic growth or job creation over the next 12 to 18 months,” Carney said.

Obama is on a three-day bus tour through North Carolina and Virginia to build support for proposals in his jobs plan.

The Senate on Monday is set to take up an appropriations package encompassing the Agriculture, Commerce and Transportation bills. That package is expected to take up the entire week of floor time in the Senate; Reid is working with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to forge an agreement on the number and types of amendments to be offered.

McConnell spokesman Don Stewart said the amendments deal was still being worked out. He said that any part of the Jobs Act paid for by a tax increase could not be offered as an amendment to the so-called minibus under Senate appropriations rules.

The House is slated next week to take up another element of Obama’s jobs package. The legislation would repeal a requirement that the federal government withhold 3 percent of payments to contractors as a down-payment for future taxes owed. The requirement has been repeatedly delayed and is opposed on a bipartisan basis.

—This story was updated at 12:01 p.m.