The proposed 5.6% surtax on millionaires, essentially the creation of a new tax bracket at the $1,000,000 income level, would raise enough money to pay for the American Jobs Act, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That pay-for will be used when the Senate attempts to pass a cloture vote this week on the bill.

Democrats have tweaked the pay-for on the American Jobs Act, making it a straight surtax on millionaires, rather than the other pay-fors on itemized deductions and closing the carried interest loophole. In other words, they altered a tax on the rich and turned it into another tax on the rich with a better slogan next to it.

I guess I’ve been remiss in writing about the American Jobs Act (AJA), but then I haven’t written anything about Libyan admission into the United Nations, either, which is a policy I’m sure somebody somewhere agrees with, but which also isn’t going to happen.

Dick Durbin admitted that the Senate doesn’t have the votes to pass the American Jobs Act. Chuck Schumer cautioned that such a statement is premature. Durbin’s right, and it’s merely a statement of political reality. Republicans are not going to agree to anything that will have immediate economic impact to help the President in his re-election.

If you believe, as Ben Bernanke does, that the high unemployment rate represents a national crisis, you have to search for another method beyond Congress, then, to get help and ameliorate the crisis. That means that you have to consider firing up the printing press and solving the demand gap with wads of cash.

The Obama Administration wants Congress to move on the American Jobs Act and “pass the bill,” but Harry Reid wants to postpone consideration for now while the Senate focuses on the China Trade Bill.

Bloomberg asked 34 economists about the American Jobs Act, and by and large they said passage of the bill would prevent a recession.

The biggest problem with the White House’s definitional strategy on the American Jobs Act was that Democrats didn’t really give it the full-throated support it needed to draw that contrast. By the end of last week, the White House was circling the wagons on that, and Democratic leaders stepped out to say that the jobs plan would have the support of the caucus. But those initial grumblings really hurt the unified message.

Are we on the way toward the same problem with the deficit reduction plan delivered today, similarly designed to draw contrast between taxes on millionaires or cuts to vital programs? So far, this looks a bit better.

The House GOP leadership has written a memo to their caucus picking and choosing what they would be willing to support in the American Jobs Act. The numbers come out to support for 1/44th of the overall price tag, about 2% of the total bill.

As you may know, the AJA is comprised of about 57% tax cuts and 43% spending initiatives. So in the main, House Republican leaders tossed out the spending and embraced a few of the tax cuts. They also rejected the tax hikes on corporations and the wealthy to pay for the bill.

House Speaker John Boehner just rejected – but in a nice way! – the American Jobs Act, saying that the plan is “a poor substitute for the pro-growth policies that are needed to remove barriers to job creation in America.” Incredibly – and you’re not going to believe this – Boehner cited deregulation and lower taxes as the path to economic growth. But curiously, he rejected the tax cuts in the American Jobs Act, meaning that there will be higher taxes on all American wage earners by January.

Weekly unemployment claims spiked up again today, and the NY Fed’s survey of regional manufacturing, a key indicator of the economy, was down sharply relative to expectations. This is a crisis time in the economy, and big solutions are needed to arrest the slide.

The political theory behind the American Jobs Act is that the President would offer a popular series of job creation measures, get his party and then the public behind them, and pressure Republicans to allow something to get through. In theory, if the programs were well-enough articulated and the Democratic coalition was singing off the same songbook, this could work. Or at least, it would work in political terms, to draw differences between the parties that may bear fruit in elections, if not in immediate policymaking.

So how is that working out?