Washington - Since he announced his job-creation plan last week in a nationally televised address at a joint session of Congress, President Barack Obama has hit the road, using stops in crucial swing states to press Americans to speak up.
"Democrats and Republicans have supported every kind of proposal that's in the American Jobs Act in the past," Obama said Wednesday in Raleigh, N.C. "Well, we got to tell them: 'Support it now.' That's where you come in."
So what are lawmakers hearing?
"Just a trickle of calls," said Hunter Lipscomb, a spokesman for freshman Rep. Steven Palazzo, R-Miss.
When Obama asked voters this summer to let Republican lawmakers know their opinions during the debt ceiling debate, constituents jammed phone lines across Capitol Hill, and crashed many members' websites.
But Congress isn't hearing much about Obama's jobs plan, a $447 billion package of tax cuts and tax credits for individuals and small businesses, along with new spending on schools, teachers, roads and bridges, aimed at putting millions of Americans back to work.
Alex Cruz, a spokesman for Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., said her office had received 21 calls supporting the president's jobs proposal and five calls against it, "a tad" more than on a typical bill, but nothing out of the ordinary.
"So far, it is nothing compared to the volume on the debt limit vote," said Sarah Little, a spokeswoman for Republican Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas.
The muted response from voters isn't what the White House was hoping for amid dismal economic warnings and the president's plummeting job-approval numbers.
The director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office told the 12 members of the bipartisan deficit-reduction "supercommittee" Tuesday that the weak economy will keep the unemployment rate around 9 percent through the end of 2012.
The census reported Tuesday that the number of Americans in poverty hit a 52-year high last year.
And public frustration with Obama is growing. According to a Bloomberg News poll this week, Americans by 51 percent to 40 percent doubt that the president's plan will help boost the economy. The same poll found that they disapprove of Obama's handling of the economy by an even wider margin, 62 percent to 30 percent. It also found his overall job approval rating sinking to a new low of 45 percent.
