I know some of you have sworn oaths to never raise any taxes on anyone for as long as you live. Now is not the time to carve out an exception and raise middle-class taxes, which is why you should pass this bill right away.He made the Republicans stand and cheer for infrastructure investment and payroll tax cuts and tax breaks for hiring the unemployed. Because he could credibly characterize all the measures as historically bipartisan ones, he was able to cast his injunction to "pass this bill" as a matter of responsibility and patriotism. The refrains were simple: "pass this bill and..." and "you should pass this jobs plan right away."
He was straightforward, too, about applying political pressure, appealing to listeners to pressure their reps:
the great conundrum of Obama’s presidency is that he has accomplished a hell of a lot–preventing a depression with his stimulus package, passing a plausible universal health care plan, fighting the good fight on financial regulatory reform, saving the auto companies–but it has worked to his political disadvantage. Dowd is correct about one of the reasons for this: the President simply isn’t a top-draw politician. If he were, we’d be talking about the Obama tax cuts–there have been two big ones–instead of the “failed” Obama stimulus package; the Obama Senior Citizen prescription drug benefit (he closed the donut hole), universal health coverage that you can never lose instead of death panels; the Detroit auto boom as a path to a revival of manufacturing. Most important, we’d be talking about jobs instead of deficits. We would never have played the Republican deficit follies these past nine months. He would be defining the political arena. Instead, the Republicans are.