Daily Democratic Wire 2-5-2010

George Wenschhof

Today, President Obama will visit Lanham, Maryland to promote his Jobs bill - he will discuss the aid for small businesses in the bill as he tours Prince George's county. The visit is planned to begin at 12:30 PM, so we will see if the monster snow storm has reached there at that time. The Baltimore Sun has more here.

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Unemployment rate drops slightly to 9.7% - the January figure is the lowest since August of last year. This drop in unemployment is also significant as loss of jobs in the housing related industry increases this time of year. Bloomberg.com has more here.

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House passes Pay-As-You-Go bill - the vote was 233-187 will all House Republicans voting against fiscal responsibility in federal government -seems like they just can not help being obstructionists. President Obama has been quick to point out this type of legislation used during the Clinton administration resulted in a 200 billion surplus at the end of his two terms in office. TheHill.com has more here.

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President Obama says he wants to go back to Republicans to discuss health care reform - The President mentioned this at the DNC meeting last night and stated he wanted to move forward on passing the bill as soon as possible. Politico.com has more here.

The general feeling among Democrats is Republicans have already said they want to scrap the bill and start over so they question the need to go back to the Republicans. Many Democrats are also unhappy the President has not made it clear how he wishes them to proceed in passing health care reform. The only option for passage at this point is for the house to pass the senate bill "as-is" and then hope through budget reconciliation, amendments to it could be passed.

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Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) unhappy with pace of negotiations to regulate the U.S. financial industry - well into the second year following the near collapse of Wall Street, the Senate has yet to act on proposed regulations. Dodd is chair of the Senate Banking Committee which is receiving huge resistance from the big banks. The New York Times has more here.

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Republican Senator Scott Brown (Mass.) sworn in.

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