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President Obama speaks on jobs Tuesday in Virginia. The Senate is expected to vote on part of the plan this week.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
NEW: "We must do what's right for the country and pass the common-sense proposals," Obama says
NEW: Each side says its legislation would help to create jobs
NEW: Both bills needed at least 60 votes to proceed
Democrats promise to force votes on individual parts of President Obama's plan
Washington (CNN) -- Democrats and Republicans tried to force versions of a jobs bill through the Senate late Thursday, but both fell short of the 60 votes they would have needed to bring their proposals to the floor.
In a 50-50 vote, senators blocked a component of President Barack Obama's jobs bill -- $35 billion for states and localities to hire more teachers and first responders while preventing current ones from being laid off.
"For the second time in two weeks, every single Republican in the United States Senate has chosen to obstruct a bill that would create jobs and get our economy going again," Obama said in a statement.
"That's unacceptable. We must do what's right for the country and pass the common-sense proposals in the American Jobs Act."
DNC chair: Obama jobs bill 'critical'
The funding would have been paid for by a 0.5% tax increase on people earning more than $1 million a year. Republicans opposed the tax increase.
"Republicans have once again said no to creating jobs inAmerica and no to helping the American people. They have turned their backs on our children and the safety of our communities by blocking a bill that would put 400,000 teachers, police officers and firefighters back to work," Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-California, said in a statement.
Similarly, senators blocked a Republican-backed proposal to repeal a 3% withholding requirement for all government contractors. Businesses have decried it as burdensome.
The measure was part of Obama's broad jobs package and has Democratic supporters. However, Democrats and Republicans disagreed over how to offset the costs of eliminating the withholding. Senate blocked the bill by a 57-43 vote.
"Every American deserves an explanation as to why Republicans refuse to step up to the plate and do what's necessary to create jobs and grow the economy right now," Obama said.
Either side would have needed at least 60 votes to move its bill forward.
"It's hard to understand why Democrats would block this bipartisan effort to protect jobs -- a provision of the president's bill," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, said in a statement after the vote. "I've said a number of times in recent days that the president doesn't want Congress to pass his jobs bill; he wants to blame Republicans and use it on the campaign trail."
Republicans have blocked debate on the entire $447 billion jobs plan in the Senate. They argue that any tax increase would harm economic growth and job creation, while Obama and Democrats contend that the president's package ensures immediate job growth.
Democrats are promising to force votes on individual components of the Obama plan.
Other components of the jobs bill to be voted on include funding for infrastructure projects and extending cuts in payroll taxes.
Among other things, Obama's overall blueprint includes an extension and expansion of the current payroll tax cut, an extension of jobless benefits, new tax credits for businesses that hire the long-term unemployed, and additional money to help save and create jobs for teachers and first responders such as firefighters.
The death of Libyan strongman Muammar Qadhafi Thursday has sharpened the contrast between President Barack Obama’s recent successes on the foreign policy front and the scattershot criticism offered by his Republican challengers.
Qadhafi’s death came seven months after Obama and European leaders launched a military campaign, eventually headed up byNATO, aimed at preventing the Libyan leader from massacring his own people. The NATO effort eventually became closely integrated with rebel forces in Libya and carried out thousands of air strikes aimed at protecting them from Qadhafi’s regime and his loyalists.
Republican presidential hopefuls have criticized Obama from all sides of the Libya issue — arguing that he acted too slowly and deferred to U.S. allies, that he ramped up the effort without adequate explanation, and that he shouldn’t have acted at all.
But the death of the Qadhafi, following the triumph of rebel forces in overthrowing his government, allowed Obama to declare success in a statement in the Rose Garden. “Today, we can definitively say that the Qadhafi regime has come to an end,” he said, adding that “we achieved our objectives.”
Vice President Joe Biden, speaking in New Hampshire, argued that the decision to tackle the problem through NATO, with the U.S. in a supporting role, was a wise one. “NATO got it right. NATO got it right,” he said. “America spent $2 billion total and didn’t lose a single life.”
After enduring years of Republican attacks for a feckless and weak foreign policy, Obama has scored a couple of dramatic victories abroad in recent months. In May, U.S. Navy SEALs killed Al Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden in a daring nighttime raid inside Pakistan. And just last month, a U.S. drone strike in Yemen killed Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born Islamic militant viewed as a key recruiter of terror operatives for Al Qaeda affiliates.
But on the campaign trail in Iowa Thursday, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, while welcoming the news of Qadhafi’s death, dodged questions about whether Obama deserved any creditfor the outcome.
“About time,” Romney told KSJC-AM. “This was a tyrant who has been killing his own people and of course is responsible for the lives of American citizens lost in the Lockerbie attack. And I think people across the world recognize that the world is a better place without Muammar Qadhafi.”
In March, however, Romney faulted Obama for “following the French into Libya.”
And in July, the former Massachusetts governor complained to a New Hampshire audience that Obama’s handling of Libya reflected “mission creep and and mission muddle.”
A Romney adviser, Eric Fehrnstorm, defended Romney’s approach Thursday and said Qadhafi’s death was no vindication for Obama.
“Mitt Romney has responded to the situation in Libya as it has developed. It is the president who has been completely unclear regarding what his intention was with respect to our military’s involvement in Libya,” Fehrnstrom said. “The fall from power and subsequent death of Qaddafi brings to end a brutal chapter in Libya’s history - but that does not validate the president’s approach to Libya.”
Texas Gov. Rick Perry issued a statement Thursday welcoming Qadhafi’s demise, but expressing no view on the process that led up to it.
“The death of Muammar el-Qaddafi is good news for the people of Libya. It should bring the end of conflict there, and help them move closer to elections and a real democracy,” Perry said.
Other Republicans, reflecting what has been criticized by some party elders as isolationism, have been against the Libyan intervention from the beginning. At a debate last month, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) said flatly that “it was wrong for the president to go into Libya.”
At another debate Tuesday, she faulted Obama for military adventurism both in Libya and elsewhere.
“He put us in Libya. He is now putting us in Africa. We already were stretched too thin, and he put our special operations forces in Africa,” Bachmann complained.
Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman issued a statement Thursday calling Qadhafi’s death “positive news for freedom loving people everywhere,” but he suggested he was still opposed to U.S. participation in the NATO mission there.
“I remain firm in my belief that America can best serve our interests and that transition through non-military assistance and rebuilding our own economic core here at home,” he said.
While the 2012 GOP field offered no credit to the White House, one of the party’s major foreign policy voices, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who has criticized Obama for not acting more aggressively in Libya, quickly bestowed such praise.
“It is a great day. I think the administration deserves great credit,” McCain said on CNN. McCain, who repeatedly pressed Obama to be more assertive in pressing for Qadhafi’s ouster and aiding the rebels added: “Obviously, I had different ideas on the tactical side but…the world is a better place.”
The fact that some in the GOP criticized Obama for leading from behind while others said he is too quick to send U.S. troops abroad suggests a growing lack of foreign policy consensus within the Republican Party, one Democratic foreign policy analyst said.
“The Republican Party right now has attacked both its ‘neo-con’ elite and its ‘traditional-con’ elite,” said Heather Hurlburt of the National Security Network. “They sort of don’t know what they think. They don’t listen to their own people…they just don’t have a coherent worldview.”
Still, some foreign policy experts said Obama’s ability to claim credit for Qadhafi’s downfall or the broader NATO success is limited because the U.S. was not at the forefront of those pressing for military action in Libya.
“They’re into the situation because the French and the British talked the United States into getting involved,” said Les Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations. “They had a stranglehold over us because they’re helping us in Afghanistan, which is not their favorite war.”
While Obama has been hit repeatedly for “leading from behind,” even the limited U.S. role in Libya required some assertive executive action on his part, particularly after Congress failed to bless the operation. Obama defied some of his legal advisers by continuing to provide American Predator drones to the mission despite language in the War Powers Resolution that calls for the U.S. withdraw its forces from hostilities if Congress doesn’t endorse such a mission within 90 days.
“Without putting a single U.S. service member on the ground,” Obama said Thursday, “we achieved our objectives, and our NATO mission will soon come to an end.”
But while the White House claimed some vindication for the president’s approach, it took care to keep the spotlight on the Libyan rebels.
“The president views this as a victory for the Libyan people,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said. “We believe — the president believes that the actions taken by his administration and by NATO have helped the Libyan people reach this day and that they now have an opportunity to secure a much brighter and more democratic future and that was the goal all along.”
Libyans “own what happened and they should be rightly proud of what they accomplished,” Carney said.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, traveling in Pakistan, said Qadhafi’s demise lifted a burden from Libya’s fledgling government.
“If it is true, then that is one more obstacle removed from being able to get on with the business of announcing a government and trying to unify the country. They have a very steep climb ahead of them,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Fox News during a trip to Afghanistan and Pakistan. “Having him out of the picture, I think, will give them more breathing space.”
Many Republican officials who welcomed Qadhafi’s demise seemed intent on offering credit to anyone other than Obama.
Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), who visited Libya with McCain, said in a statement: “Today marks the end of Qadhafi’s reign and a new opportunity for freedom, prosperity and a voice in the global community for Libyans. The Administration, especially Secretary Clinton, deserve our congratulations.”
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who also traveled to Libya, told Fox News on Thursday that Europeans were at the forefront of the effort and deserve most of the credit.
“Ultimately, this is about the freedom and liberty of the Libyan people. But let’s give credit where credit is due: it’s the French and British that led on this fight and probably even led on the strike that led to Qadhafi’s capture or, you know, to his death,” the Republican Senator from Florida said.
Rubio added that Obama “did the right things, he just took too long to do it and didn’t do enough of it.”
Carney suggested that many of the criticisms leveled at Obama were vague and opportunistic.
“What alternative action were they suggesting? Were they suggesting U.S. troops on the ground…unilateral U.S. action?” he asked.
After 42 years in power, Qadhafi went into hiding on August 21 with the fall of Tripoli to opposition forces. According to reports, several members of his family fled the country several weeks ago.
Charles Hoskinson, Ben Smith, and MJ Lee contributed to this report.
SIRTE, Libya (AP) — Dragged from hiding in a drainage pipe, a wounded Moammar Gadhafi raised his hands and begged revolutionary fighters: "Don't kill me, my sons." Within an hour, he was dead, but not before jubilant Libyans had vented decades of hatred by pulling the eccentric dictator's hair and parading his bloodied body on the hood of a truck.
The death Thursday of Gadhafi, two months after he was driven from power and into hiding, decisively buries the nearly 42-year regime that had turned the oil-rich country into an international pariah and his own personal fiefdom.
It also thrusts Libya into a new age in which its transitional leaders must overcome deep divisions and rebuild nearly all its institutions from scratch to achieve dreams of democracy.
"We have been waiting for this historic moment for a long time. Moammar Gadhafi has been killed," Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril said in the capital of Tripoli. "I would like to call on Libyans to put aside the grudges and only say one word, which is Libya, Libya, Libya."
President Barack Obama told the Libyan people: "You have won your revolution."
Although the U.S. briefly led the relentless NATO bombing campaign that sealed Gadhafi's fate, Washington later took a secondary role to its allies. Britain and France said they hoped that his death would lead to a more democratic Libya.
Other leaders have fallen in the Arab Spring uprisings, but the 69-year-old Gadhafi is the first to be killed. He was shot to death in his hometown of Sirte, where revolutionary fighters overwhelmed the last of his loyalist supporters Thursday after weeks of heavy battles.
Also killed in the city was one of his feared sons, Muatassim, while another son — one-time heir apparent Seif al-Islam — was wounded and captured. An AP reporter saw cigarette burns on Muatassim's body.
Bloody images of Gadhafi's last moments raised questions over how exactly he died after he was captured wounded, but alive. Video on Arab television stations showed a crowd of fighters shoving and pulling the goateed, balding Gadhafi, with blood splattered on his face and soaking his shirt.
Gadhafi struggled against them, stumbling and shouting as the fighters pushed him onto the hood of a pickup truck. One fighter held him down, pressing on his thigh with a pair of shoes in a show of contempt.
Fighters propped him on the hood as they drove for several moments, apparently to parade him around in victory.
"We want him alive. We want him alive," one man shouted before Gadhafi was dragged off the hood, some fighters pulling his hair, toward an ambulance.
Later footage showed fighters rolling Gadhafi's lifeless body over on the pavement, stripped to the waist and a pool of blood under his head. His body was then paraded on a car through Misrata, a nearby city that suffered a brutal siege by regime forces during the eight-month civil war that eventually ousted Gadhafi. Crowds in the streets cheered, "The blood of martyrs will not go in vain."
Thunderous celebratory gunfire and cries of "God is great" rang out across Tripoli well past midnight, leaving the smell of sulfur in the air. People wrapped revolutionary flags around toddlers and flashed V for victory signs as they leaned out car windows. Martyrs' Square, the former Green Square from which Gadhafi made many defiant speeches, was packed with revelers.
In Sirte, the ecstatic former rebels celebrated the city's fall after weeks of fighting by firing endless rounds into the sky, pumping their guns, knives and even a meat cleaver in the air and singing the national anthem.
The outpouring of joy reflected the deep hatred of a leader who had brutally warped Libya with his idiosyncratic rule. After seizing power in a 1969 coup that toppled the monarchy, Gadhafi created a "revolutionary" system of "rule by the masses," which supposedly meant every citizen participated in government but really meant all power was in his hands. He wielded it erratically, imposing random rules while crushing opponents, often hanging anyone who plotted against him in public squares.
Abroad, Gadhafi posed as a Third World leader, while funding militants, terror groups and guerrilla armies. His regime was blamed in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotlandand the downing of a French passenger jet in Africa the following year, as well as the 1986 bombing of a German discotheque frequented by U.S. servicemen that killed three people.
The day began with revolutionary forces bearing down on the last of Gadhafi's heavily armed loyalists who in recent days had been squeezed into a block of buildings of about 700 square yards.
A large convoy of vehicles moved out of the buildings, and revolutionary forces moved to intercept it, said Fathi Bashagha, spokesman for the Misrata Military Council, which commanded the fighters who captured him. At 8:30 a.m., NATO warplanes struck the convoy, a hit that stopped it from escaping, according to French Defense Minister Gerard Longuet.
Fighters then clashed with loyalists in the convoy for three hours, with rocket-propelled grenades, anti-aircraft weapons and machine guns. Members of the convoy got out of the vehicles, Bashagha said.
Gadhafi and other supporters fled on foot, with fighters in pursuit, he said. A Gadhafi bodyguard captured as they ran away gave a similar account to Arab TV stations.
Gadhafi and several bodyguards took refuge in a drainage pipe under a highway nearby. After clashes ensued, Gadhafi emerged, telling the fighters outside, "What do you want? Don't kill me, my sons," according to Bashagha and Hassan Doua, a fighter who was among those who captured him.
Bashagha said Gadhafi died in the ambulance from wounds suffered during the clashes. Abdel-Jalil Abdel-Aziz, a doctor who accompanied the body in the ambulance during the 120-mile drive to Misrata, said Gadhafi died from two bullet wounds — to the head and chest.
A government account of Gadhafi's death said he was captured unharmed and later was mortally wounded in the crossfire from both sides.
Amnesty International urged the revolutionary fighters to give a complete report, saying it was essential to conduct "a full, independent and impartial inquiry to establish the circumstances of Col. Gadhafi's death."
The TV images of Gadhafi's bloodied body sent ripples across the Arab world and on social networks such as Twitter.
Many wondered whether a similar fate awaits Syria's Bashar Assad and Yemen's Ali Abdullah Saleh, two leaders clinging to power in the face of long-running Arab Spring uprisings. For the millions of Arabs yearning for freedom, democracy and new leadership, the death of one of the region's most brutal dictators will likely inspire and invigorate the movement for change.
As word spread of Gadhafi's death, jubilant Libyans poured into Tripoli's central Martyr's Square, chanting "Syria! Syria!" — urging the Syrian opposition on to victory.
"This will signal the death of the idea that Arab leaders are invincible," said Egyptian activist and blogger Hossam Hamalawi. "Mubarak is in a cage, Ben Ali ran away, and now Gadhafi killed. ... All this will bring down the red line that we can't get these guys."
Thursday's final blows to the Gadhafi regime allow Libya's interim leadership, the National Transitional Council, to declare the entire country liberated.
It rules out a scenario some had feared — that Gadhafi might flee into Libya's southern deserts and lead a resistance campaign. Following the fall of Tripoli on Aug. 21, Gadhafi loyalists mounted fierce resistance in several areas, including Sirte, preventing the new leadership from declaring full victory. Earlier this week, revolutionary fighters gained control of one stronghold, Bani Walid.
Information Minister Mahmoud Shammam told AP that Muatassim Gadhafi was killed in Sirte. Abdel-Aziz, the doctor who accompanied Gadhafi's body in the ambulance, said Muatassim was shot in the chest. Also killed was Gadhafi's Defense Minister Abu Bakr Younis.
Justice Minister Mohammed al-Alagi said Seif al-Islam Gadhafi had been wounded in the leg and was being held in a hospital in the city of Zlitan, northwest of Sirte. Shammam said Seif was captured in Sirte, but the senior NTC leadership did not immediately confirm.
The National Council will declare liberation on Saturday, Mohamed Sayeh, a senior council member, said. That begins a key timetable toward creating a new system: The NTC has always said it will form a new interim government within a month of liberation and will hold elections within eight months.
But the revolutionary forces are an unruly mix of militias from Libya's major cities, and already differences have emerged between them. Revolutionaries from Tripoli, Misrata and Benghazi — Libya's second-largest city that has served as the rebel capital during the civil war — have exchanged accusations that each is trying to dominate the new rule.
Also, Islamic fundamentalists have taken an increasingly prominent role, pushing for some form of Islamic state in Libya, causing friction with more secular leaders.
"Libyans aim for multiparty politics, justice, democracy and freedom," said Libyan Defense Minister Jalal al-Degheili. "The end of Gadhafi is not the aim, we say the minor struggle is over. The bigger struggle is now coming. This will not happen unless all the Libyan people are ... united."
___
Associated Press reporters Rami al-Shabheibi in Misrata, Libya and Hadeel Al-Shalchi, Maggie Michael and Sarah El Deeb in Cairo contributed to this report. Gamel reported from Tripoli.
(This version CORRECTS Minor edits to correct misspellings in paragraphs 11 and 17. With interactive, 2011/gadhafi/. AP Video.)
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