According to The Hill today, “Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) signaled on Tuesday that he and other Senate Democrats are looking to advance President Obama’s proposal to spend $35 billion to shore up jobs for teachers, police and firefighters in the coming weeks. Reid, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and other Senate Democrats on Monday introduced the Teachers and First Responders Act, which mirrors the plan Obama has been touting in a bid to get Congress to pass pieces of his American Jobs Act. Under the proposal, $30 billion would be used to shore up 400,000 teacher jobs, and another $5 billion would go for thousands of police and firefighter jobs. Reid said Tuesday that the bill, S. 1723, is ‘fully paid for,’ but said rather than cuts to other federal programs, it would raise taxes on the wealthy.”

But, as Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell explained in a floor speech this morning, these plans from Democrats sound awfully familiar. “[T]his isn’t the first time President Obama’s demanded that Congresses pass what he calls a ‘jobs bill,’” Leader McConnell said. “But if this one were to pass, and it worked as advertised, then it would be the first one that did. Again and again, the President’s response to America’s ongoing jobs crisis has been to insist that Congress pass some urgent piece of legislation right away, or an even worse calamity would result. Those bills were supposed to create jobs and prevent layoffs too. But he keeps coming back for more. I guess the President is counting on the American people to forget that part. He’s counting on us to forget about the other stimulus legislation he’s already signed into law, and that it’s failed to live up to the hype every time.”

Indeed, last year Democrats passed a $26 billion state bailout that they claimed could save something like 300,000 jobs. Former White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said at the time that it would “ensure that 160,000-plus teachers didn’t get fired as a result of bad state budgets.” Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) boasted, “The measure we are considering today… will save more than 100,000 jobs in schools across America.” And the third ranking Democrat in the Senate, Chuck Schumer (D-NY), said, “There is no doubt about it, if we fail to pass this bill, hundreds of thousands of teachers and firefighters will lose their jobs.”

And in 2009, President Obama promised of his nearly $1 trillion stimulus bill, “It’s a plan that will save or create up to four million jobs over the next two years … And the jobs of firefighters, teachers, nurses, and police officers that would otherwise be eliminated if we don’t provide states with some relief.” Obama said because of the stimulus, “We’ve created and saved, as you said, Joe, at least 150,000 jobs – jobs of teachers and nurses and firefighters and police officers.”

Yet here majority Senate Democrats and the president are, demanding passage of yet another multi-billion bailout to save the jobs of teachers and others they said would be saved by their previous two spending bills. Just this morning, Senate Majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said, “Nationwide, state and local budget cuts would cost as many as 280,000 teacher jobs next year—unless we do something about that. This teachers and first responders legislation will invest $30 billion to create or save nearly 400,000 teacher jobs.”

But even Democrats aren’t completely sold on Democrats’ latest bailout. Politico reported last night, “Sens. Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Jon Tester of Montana were the only two Democrats who voted last week to filibuster President Barack Obama’s $447 billion American Jobs Act. And they’re not yet sold on their party’s latest idea: Breaking off $35 billion from that plan for states and localities to hire teachers and first-responders. ‘If I didn’t think much of it on the one thing, you’ve got to assume that I won’t think much of it for something else,’ Nelson told POLITICO on Monday evening. ‘I don’t think you increase taxes for new spending.’ Tester said he wasn’t as concerned about the 0.5 percent surtax on families making more than $1 million to pay for the $35 billion plan. But he was unsure whether the new spending proposals would actually create more jobs.” And according to a Politico report today, “Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) says President Obama’s new plan to pass his jobs acts in “bite-size” pieces is not going to work. ‘When you look at the president’s jobs act, even if you break it into bite-size pieces, it’s spending money we don’t have, and you’ve got to raise taxes to pay for it, and to me, all that just makes the job of the debt reduction committee … even harder,’ Lieberman said on Fox News Tuesday morning.”

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