Obama and Congressional leaders pledge to work together

I / Washington February 10, 2010, 10:59 IST

Following a rare bipartisan meeting, US President Barack Obama and the Congressional leaders have pledged to work together on a range of issues including jobs, health care, trade and energy.

Despite that the federal government was closed because of snow blizzard over the weekend, and city officials were still digging out snow from road, top Congressional leaders from both Democratic and Republican party drove down to the White House for a two-hour meeting with Obama.

"We all understand that there are legitimate and genuine differences between the parties," Obama told White House Correspondents in a surprise appearance at their press room.

"But despite the political posturing that often paralyses this town, there are many issues upon which we can and should agree," he said.

Terming it a productive meeting, the Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, said: "Senate Democrats remain hopeful that our Republican colleagues will work with us this week to take swift action and pass legislation to help businesses thrive and create jobs."

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said: "We had a good meeting with the President and what I'd like to emphasise is there are some areas of potential agreement."

Referring to the State of the Union address of Obama in which he supported nuclear power, offshore drilling, clean coal technology and trade agreements, presumably with Colombia, Panama and Korea, the ones that have been languishing now for a year and a half or so, McConnell said these are the areas where there could be pretty broad bipartisan support to go forward in a collaborative basis.

"Obviously, there will be areas of disagreement, but emphasising the things that we might be able to work on together, I would mention those four areas, all of which, I think, would be job generators: nuclear power, offshore drilling, clean coal technology, and pass those languishing trade agreements which we know create jobs here in the United States," he said.

"We are interested in a bipartisan conversation with regard to health care, but a bipartisan conversation ought to be that, bipartisan from the beginning. We've been asking to be involved in these health care conversations going back to a letter that we sent to the president last May and we got no response to it," McConnell said.

Reid told reporters that he planned to introduce job-creation legislation later Tuesday, which he had hoped to unveil last week but was delayed by the snowfall that paralysed much of Washington, and is now threatening to keep the Senate in session through the weekend to debate the measure.

"I don't know of any sticking points at this stage," he said, adding: "I think we are in pretty good shape."