President Obama's news conference went about as expected on Thursday, as he once again called for action on his jobs bill in Congress and again challenged Republicans to meet him halfway on a bill to spur economic growth.
"This is not a game; this is not the time for the usual political gridlock," the President said, teeing up some familiar arguments on action by Congress on jobs creation legislation.
"The proposals in this bill are not just random investments to create make-work jobs," said Mr. Obama.
The President acknowledged in his over one hour news conference that "there is no doubt" that economic growth in the U.S. has slowed in recent months.
"I think people were much more optimistic at the beginning of this year."
But while he acknowledged that economic weakness, the President repeatedly said the blame should be on Republicans for refusing to accept his plans for job growth.
"Each time, what we’ve seen is games-playing, a preference to try to score political points rather than actually get something done on the part of the other side," the President said.
One thing that was interesting about this news conference was that the President had to spend time defending his administration on two controversial items from recent weeks, Solyndra and Operation Fast and Furious.
"I’ve been very clear that I have complete confidence in Attorney General Holder," said the President on Fast and Furious, arguing that neither of them knew the details of the plan that allowed weapons to be funneled to Mexican drug gangs.
"I think both he and I would have been very unhappy if somebody had suggested that guns were allowed to pass through that could have been prevented by the United States of America," Mr. Obama said.
The answer came just about an hour after Republicans released new documents from the Justice Department, which showed that Fast and Furious had been noted for the Attorney General five times in the Summer of 2010 in a weekly summary presented to Holder by aides.
The summary though did not specifically say that the feds were allowing guns to go into Mexico; it simply noted a gun trafficking investigation in Arizona.
As for Solyndra, the President did not back off earlier statements where he defended the work of his administration to award the solar company an over $500 billion loan guarantee.
"I have confidence that the decisions were made based on what would be good for the American economy and the American people and putting people back to work," the President told reporters.
The fact that Mr. Obama was questioned several times about the Fast and Furious and Solyndra issues demonstrates where he is right now in his time in office - while he can drive the news on the jobs bill, he now has to be in a reactive mode on two scandal-type issues.
Whether they reach "scandal" level or simply stay as what we might call "affairs," we'll see in the months ahead.
