Obama won't negotiate with Republicans on jobs

President Obama says he won't negotiate a jobs package with Republicans unless they first propose solutions that can create jobs now.

Obama said Thursday that Republicans must seek to address some of the same issues he has suggested -- such as repairing roads, saving teachers' jobs and cutting payroll taxes.

If they come around to his way of thinking, he said, "I'll be right there. We'll be ready to go."

Until then, the president said, he will work with Senate Democratic leaders to put forward individual pieces of the $447 billion jobs plan that Republicans blocked from consideration Tuesday night. That's a strategy designed to force Republicans to oppose popular proposals.

House Republicans have suggested several areas of potential agreement with the White House, but not on Obama's biggest job-creating ideas, such as payroll tax cuts, spending billions on infrastructure repair and federal aid to state and local governments to keep public employees on the payroll.

Senate Republicans will propose a package of their own today, but on completely different policies -- cutting corporate tax rates, curtailing government regulations and increasing domestic energy production. Those will take longer to achieve than the spending and tax-cutting proposals from the president.

Obama has pretty much ignored GOP efforts to negotiate this time, having been dissatisfied with past talks over the federal debt limit and deficit reduction.

Those negotiations pinned the president down in Washington for most of the summer, but in the end, Republicans got nearly $1 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years, while Obama didn't get any tax increases on upper-income Americans.

"We are happy to work with Republicans where they are willing to put politics behind the issues that are important to the American people," Obama said.

But, he said, "we're not going to wait around and play the usual political games in Washington, because the American people are desperate for some solutions right now.

"We're not going to create a lot of theater that then results in them engaging in the usual political talking points but don't result in action. People want action."