transportation bill that employs thousands of construction workers. there s a lot of talk in washington these days about creating jobs, but it doesn t help when they risk losing hundreds of thousands of jobs because of political gamesmanship. we need to pass this transportation bill and put people to work rebuilding america. we need to put our differences aside and do the right thing for our economy. joining any now nbc white house correspondent mike va khaira. good saturday morning. good morning. how is the president framing this big debate leading up to thursday? reporter: he s giving hints about proposals he puts forward to the joint session of congress. a very rare obviously state of the union style speech. probably the most con speck with us venue he could have chosen. in the past frankly you heard about infrastructure spending there, traditional projects like roads and bridges and thinks of that nature. he was talking about a highway bill stalled in congress. the presid
this move this country forward and work with republicans and yet again they slam the door not only in my face but in bipartisanship s face. that s the overall theme of what the president is running on next year, running against on a do-nothing congress. truman did that in 1948. he s going to try to paint this running against washington and the republican partisans, if you will. we ll see if, in fact, that actually works. what republicans will say is, yeah, we re stopping president obama in his tracks, and the reason why is because we ve given him three years of trying to fix the economy and nothing has worked. so you better believe we re trying to stop this, because we don t believe in the direction where he s taking the country. zee peter, do you think the president is raising the stakes by convening this jointd session of congress? can he deliver on all these heightened expectations? he has to do this, alex. the fact is that the president was instrumental in stabilizing
more about those projects spending billions of dollars on those in an effort to stimulate the economy. he s talking about expending the payroll tax can you tell and moving it to the employer side and gives tax credit to employers who hire people unemployed. the news yesterday is horrible news. the unemployment rate at 9.1%. a problem for the 14 million americans out of work and looking for work. a political problem for the president, and that s what you have seen him do over the last couple of days. try to to shift is over to republicans in congress, sort of running a campaign that harkens back to 1992, is the economy stupid and in 1948 when president truman ran against congress. you ll see them play out over the kours of the months. a republican from southwestern virginia struck a lot of familiar republican themes in his response to the president this morning. the president s stimulus
make light work. that s exactly what i see going on here. reporter: back live at main street on ludlow. some signs that things are starting to get back to normal. you have to wonder, alex, things okay now 24 hours from now, 48 hours from now when the rains come back. keep in mind the flooding they stay in vermont last week. the worst flooding in 75 years. just as they start to pick themselves up and dust themselves off here in vermont, more rains are comes. i didn t like what i heard from bill karins from those folks. craig melvin, many thanks for live reports throughout this morning. speaking of this morning the president is urging lawmakers to work together to create jobs and avoid political posturing. this thursday the president s weekly address calls on congress to cleanly and quickly pass a