House GOP leaders announce vote on jobs package as early as next week

GOP leaders said on Tuesday that the House is set to vote on a package of job-creation bills as soon as next week.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), who spearheaded the effort to bundle six bipartisan bills together, told reporters on Capitol Hill that the chamber would vote on the “Jumpstart Our Business Startups,” or JOBS Act, in a little over a week.

Cantor, flanked by his fellow members of the House GOP leadership team, including Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and GOP Conference Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), explained that the JOBS Act, in part, would “reflect the work of the president’s jobs council.”

He cited a White House statement earlier in the day calling for a “jumpstart” of business start-ups.

The compilation of bills — most of which have garnered bipartisan support in the House or in committee — was geared towards sparking investment in entrepreneurial and small-business start-up companies.

Boehner, a successful small businessman before his foray into politics, noted that the bundle of bills would target the “red tape and access to capital” issues plaguing would-be small-business owners.

“During the State of the Union Address, the president called for ideas just like this, in order to increase business start-ups in our country,” Boehner reminded the press corps, staff and businessmen and -women at the press conference.

House Democrats however, released a statement moments before the GOP leaders announced the JOBS Act, calling it more of the “same old ideological agenda that ignores jobs creation.”

“Americans are sick of charades from House Republicans. Instead of reinventing their rhetoric, the GOP should join Democrats in actually focusing on the country’s top priority: jobs,” a notice sent to reporters from House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi’s (Calif.) office stated.

"[T]his clearly is not the jobs bill that we are looking for" said Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.). "It is a pretense in packaging together just old bills."

But GOP freshman Rep. Stephen Fincher (Tenn.) — whose bill to reduce small business’ cost of going public will serve as the base bill for the JOBS Act — said that the intention is to make it easier for job creators to expand and hire more workers.

“News flash, we don’t create jobs in the halls of Congress, the private sector creates jobs — and that’s what this package does, it puts the focus back on the private sector, back on capitalism and the free market,” Fincher said. 

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