President Obama took to the Rose Garden today, flanked by a crowd of teachers, veterans, cops, firefighters, construction workers, and small-business owners to tout his new jobs bill, arguing that politics were the only thing standing in the way of its passage. “Joe and I as we were walking out here, we were looking at one of the Washington newspapers, and it was quoting a Republican aide saying, ‘I don’t know why we’d want to cooperate with Obama right now, it's not good for our politics,” he said. “That’s the attitude in this town.”
“The fact of the matter is the next election is 14 months away. The American people don’t have the luxury of waiting 14 months for Congress to take action,” Obama said. “These aren’t games we’re playing out here, folks are out of work.” He finished by calling once again for people to contact their congressman. “Pick up the phone … write an email, use one of those airplane skywriters, dust off the fax machine,” he said. “Or you can just, like, write a letter. So long as you get the message to Congress.” (More Barack Obama stories.)