President Obama pushes Congress to end 'circus,' act now on economy

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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44440210/ns/politics-white_house/

Calling it an "urgent time for our country," President Barack Obama asked Congress on Thursday night to "stop the political circus" and approve a nearly half-trillion-dollar plan to help the economy by cutting payroll taxes, raising taxes on the wealthy and rewarding companies that hire new workers.

We continue to face an economic crisis that has left millions of our neighbors jobless and a political crisis that has made things worse," Obama said in an address to a joint session of Congress.

To answer that crisis, Obama was proposing what he called the American Jobs Act, which he said would cut payroll taxes in half for working Americans and small businesses; boost spending on public works, like roads and schools, by $105 billion; and make permanent a temporary cut in the individual tax rate, which was reduced from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent for this year only.

Obama calculated that the "typical working family" would get a $1,500 tax cut and that small companies with 50 employees would save $80,000, which he said would "provide a jolt to an economy that has stalled."