Obama expected to call for $300 billion jobs package

President Barack Obama is expected to unveil a $300 billion plan to boost the economy in his speech Thursday before a joint session of Congress.

Bloomberg reports the plan will call mostly for tax cuts, infrastructure spending and direct aid to state and local governments.

Obama will call on Congress to offset the cost of the short-term jobs measures by raising tax revenue in later years. This would be part of a long-term deficit reduction package, including spending and entitlement cuts as well as revenue increases, that he will present next week to the congressional panel charged with finding ways to reduce the nation’s debt.

About half of the $300 billion would come from tax cuts, including an extension of the payroll tax paid by workers, which is set to expire December 31, and a new cut to the payroll tax paid by employers. 

CNN says the plans' prospects in Congress "appear murky at best."

Some Republicans have already dismissed it, saying any proposal from the president will amount to little more than a continuation of what they characterize as his failed 2009 stimulus plan.

Among the other proposals that could be included in the package, CNN reports, are a tax credit for employers who hire unemployed workers and an another extension of unemployment benefits.

Obama's speech comes just a few days after a worse-than-expected jobs report from the Labor Department showed the economy added no new net jobs in August, and the unemployment rate stayed at 9.1 percent.

On Monday, Obama gave a Labor Day speech in which he said he planned to propose "ways to put America back to work that both parties can agree to, because I still believe both parties can work together to solve our problems."

On Tuesday, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney unveiled his own set of economic proposals, laid out in a speech and a 160-page book titled "Believe in America: Mitt Romney’s Plan for Jobs and Economic Growth." Romney called Obama's economic strategy "a pay-phone strategy in a smart-phone world."