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Wasting no time, President Barack Obama is pitching to the public his $447 billion jobs program of tax cuts and new spending after bluntly telling Congress to “stop the political circus” and fix the economy.

But that doesn’t mean Republicans are buying.

“The proposals the president outlined tonight merit consideration,” House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Thursday after Obama, in a nationally televised address to Congress, laid out an agenda that leaned heavily on payroll tax cuts to put money into the economy. “We hope he gives serious consideration to our ideas as well.

“It’s my hope that we can work together,” Boehner added.

While noncommittal, it was one of the more generous reactions from Republicans to a speech from a Democratic president in political trouble seeking bipartisanship to repair a long-ailing economy.

“You should pass it right away,” the president told lawmakers more than once and pledged to campaign for its enactment “in every corner of this country.” To that end, Obama set his first trip for Friday to Richmond, Va., a city represented by the No. 2 Republican in the House, Majority Leader Eric Cantor.

There were other hints that Obama intends to carry the fight to Republicans, including his statement that “there’s a bridge that needs repair between Ohio and Kentucky” _ the states that sent Boehner and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell to Congress.

In a statement issued after the speech, McConnell said, “For months, we’ve been engaged in a national debate about spending and debt, about the need to get our nation’s fiscal house in order, about the need to rein in government. … Yet here we are, tonight, being asked by this same president to support even more government spending with the assurance that he’ll figure out a way to pay for it later.”

Obama offered no estimate of the number of jobs his plan would create. He said the tax cuts he is recommending would mean $1,500 a year for the typical working family and $80,000 for businesses with 50 employees of average pay. Unemployment has been stuck at 9.1 percent for two consecutive months and not even the administration is projecting significant improvement anytime soon.

With a nod to deficit hawks _ independent voters among them _ Obama also said he would outline legislation in coming days to offset the bill’s $447 billion price tag so it wouldn’t add to federal deficits.

While the bill’s $253 billion in tax cuts could well draw support from Republicans, an additional $194 billion in new spending likely will prove a harder sell. The president asked for the money to fund highway and other construction projects, modernize schools, stabilize blighted neighborhoods and help states hire teachers and first responders.

“The president’s plan is nothing new,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the senior Republican on the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee.

Rep. Hal Rogers of Kentucky, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said he was “concerned that what we’ve heard from President Obama this evening is an echo of his administration’s unsuccessful strategy of the last few years, which has resulted in unsustainable spending that has skyrocketed the budget deficit and pushed our nation further into fiscal crisis.”

“Rather than offer a new road map for recovery and reform, he merely dusted off a tired agenda of old ideas wrapped in freshly partisan rhetoric,” said Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate and a member of the special committee just embarking on talks to cut future deficits by $1.2 trillion or more.

The reaction of Democrats in Congress was supportive of the president but in terms more partisan than he had used.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he hoped the proposals would “present a litmus test to Republicans. I hope they will show the American people that they are more interested in creating jobs than defeating President Obama.”

Democrats control a majority in the Senate but lack the 60 votes to pass legislation over Republican objections.

They have little power in the House, where Republicans are in control.

But the party’s leader in the House, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, challenged the majority in terms similar to Reid’s.

“Republicans have a choice to either work with Democrats on the immediate need to create jobs or waste more time when American families are demanding action,” she said.

The centerpiece of Obama’s plan is a reduction in the Social Security payroll tax for millions of workers as well as for employers.

The tax for individuals was cut from 6.2 percent of wages to 4.2 percent for the current year but would rise again on Jan. 1 without action by Congress. Instead, Obama proposed cutting it further for 2012, to 3.1 percent.

The same 3.1 percent tax would apply to employers, half of what they now pay. In addition, businesses would receive additional tax breaks for hiring veterans or individuals who have been without work for more than six months.

A fact sheet distributed by the White House said if enacted, the president’s proposals would prevent 280,000 teacher layoffs, modernize 35,000 schools and establish a new National Infrastructure Bank to modernize roads, rails and other public facilities.

The White House also said an extension of unemployment insurance the president is seeking would prevent 5 million Americans from losing their benefits and encourage states to put initiatives into place along the lines of a Georgia program in which individuals collecting unemployment benefits can do temporary work.

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The fear that has gripped Europe’s sovereign debt market for months took root in its stock markets as investors increasingly worried on Tuesday about uncertain growth prospects for some of the continent’s biggest companies.

Spain and Italy watched their borrowing costs drop further in signs of success for a massive central bank move to quell Europe debt’s crisis, but stock markets were in turmoil as stronger economies showed worrying signs of slowing.

Germany’s stock market was down for the 10th consecutive day and new data from Europe’s growth engine showed that export growth _ a closely watched economic indicator _ is slowing down.

The Federal Statistical Office said exports in June were up by 3.1 percent to euro88.3 billion ($126 billion) on the year, the smallest increase in 16 months.

“In June we got to feel the first indications of the decreasing global economic dynamism,” said Anton Boerner, the head of Germany’s exporters’ association.

The impact of the slowing U.S. economy “will be felt in the coming months,” he added.

Germany has sailed through the debt crisis relatively unscathed. Despite much grumbling over the big contributions to the rescue packages to Greece, Ireland and Portugal, the eurozone’s largest economy enjoyed stellar growth last year and early this year, big companies like BMW and Volkswagen reported bumper profits and unemployment is lower than in has been in years.

But if the current stock market sell-off continues, this may soon change. Since July 22, the day after eurozone leaders decided to give their bailout fund new powers but refused to expand its size, Germany’s main stock index, the DAX has lost more than 20 percent. That’s more than the 15 percent drop seen on the FTSE 100 in the U.K., or the 17 percent dive on the French CAC-40.

Closely watched German indicators of consumer confidence and business confidence also declined more than expected last month.

German output grew by 3.6 percent last year, and the government in Europe’s biggest economy hopes growth this year will again top 3 percent.

But in France _ Germany’s biggest trading partner _ growth is likely to only be 0.2 percent in the third quarter, the central bank said this week.

Though France remains one of Europe’s strongest economies, there have been some signs recently that the country may become the next triple A country to be downgraded, especially as the government is unlikely to implement austerity measures ahead of spring elections at a time when the economy is slowing. One indicator of this possible concern has been the recent rise in the spread between German and French yields to 15-year highs.

“With yields now above those of the Netherlands, Finland and Austria, France seems in danger of slipping out of the ‘core’ to become more closely associated with the eurozone’s periphery,” said Jennifer McKeown, senior European economist at Capital Economics.

Though McKeown noted that France’s growth prospects are considerably better than the likes of Italy and Spain, she said no other eurozone economy with a triple A rating has a higher debt than France’s, which stands at around 85 percent of national income.

In addition, McKeown cautioned that France’s contribution to Europe’s bailouts are already boosting public debt at a time when French banks are already heavily exposed to the government debt of countries like Greece.

The Bank of France’ s monthly industrial survey showed both corporate order books and factory utilization rates falling for the second month in a row in July.

The benchmark in France recovered from earlier losses and was slightly up in early afternoon trading, but the DAX was 1.4 percent lower, echoing Monday’s plunge on Wall Street, where the Dow Jones fell a dizzying 634 points, one of the worst days since 2008.

The negative sentiment on stock markets contrasted with somewhat declining tensions in Spanish and Italian bond markets, where intervention from the European Central Bank was starting to take its effect.

The yield, or interest rate, on Spanish 10-year bonds was at 5.03 percent, after approaching 6.5 percent just a week ago. The yield on Italian equivalents was at 5.14 percent, also about 1 percentage point below where it was Monday morning before the ECB intervention.

“It is the worst crisis since World War II and it could have been the worst crisis since World War I if leaders hadn’t taken the important decisions,” ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet said with French radio station Europe 1, defending the bank’s decision to further intervene on bond markets.

Trichet didn’t directly confirm that the ECB has been buying up the bonds of Italy and Spain, saying only that his banks “is in the secondary market” for eurozone bonds and that it would release the amounts invested on Monday, as it does every week.

The ECB head also indicated that his bank still sees the main responsibility for fighting the debt crisis with eurozone governments and not the central bank.

“I won’t say” how long the ECB will buy bonds on the secondary market, Trichet said. “What we expect is that the governments do what we consider to be their job.”

Despite the ECB’s reluctance to take a central role in fighting the debt crisis, analysts have warned that it may not be easy for the bank to halt its bond-buying program once the eurozone bailout fund has been equipped with its new powers.

They caution that the euro440 billion European Financial Stability Facility does not have enough money to intervene effectively on secondary markets to help large countries like Italy and Spain, and that divisions among countries, which all have to sign off on intervention, could delay any necessary action.

____

Baetz reported from Berlin. Melissa Eddy in Berlin, Greg Keller, Angela Charlton in Paris and Pan Pylas in London contributed to this story.

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Shares of Dunkin’ Donuts parent company are set to start trading Wednesday morning after pricing at $19 per share, more than the $16 to $18 range it predicted two weeks ago.

Dunkin’ Brands Group Inc., which also owns the Baskin-Robbins ice cream chain, sold about 22.3 million shares. That means it raised about $423 million before deducting underwriting expenses.

The underwriters, which include JPMorgan Chase & Co., Morgan Stanley & Co., and Barclays Capital Inc., also have the option to buy 3.3 more million shares in the next month. If they do, Dunkin’ would raise about $486 million.

Either way, Dunkin’ would raise more than it originally forecast: When the company first announced its intentions to go public in May, it said it expected to raise about $400 million.

Dunkin’ Brands said it plans to use the money to pay down its substantial debt.

The company, based in Canton, Mass., wants to grow outside its U.S. stronghold, the Northeast. It also is expanding internationally, with South Korea and the Middle East on its radar. The company says it has no plans to pay shareholder dividends “for the foreseeable future.”

The company’s current owners, a coterie of three private equity firms, will continue to play a powerful role at the company even after it goes public.

Together, Bain Capital Partners, Carlyle Group and Thomas H. Lee Partners will own as much as 78 percent of the public Dunkin’ Brands, which will make it nearly impossible for any dissident shareholders to effect substantial changes. The three firms control six of the nine seats on the board of directors.

Shares will trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “DNKN.”

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Leaders in four area counties announced on Thursday a regional anti-meth drive

The federal government, the country’s biggest property owner, is looking to unload a hefty chunk of its real estate portfolio.

The Obama administration has identified 14,000 buildings that agencies can afford to lose, and put forward a new plan on Wednesday that will help move the process along.

At the center of the effort is legislation that would create a Civilian Property Realignment Board, an independent commission based on the similar panel that was used to close military bases.

The new group will recommend buildings to close or demolish.

And if everything works out, taxpayers will save an estimated $15 billion over the next three years.

Currently, agencies must meet 20 requirements before unloading property, according to Office of Management and Budget Deputy Director Jeffrey Zients.

One condition is that buildings must be offered up as housing for the homeless before being sold.

That red tape, coupled with resistance from local political interests, and the added stress on short-term budgets associated with real estate transactions, has created an environment where waste is endemic us fast cash.

"For too long, the American people’s hard-earned tax dollars have gone to waste," Zients said. "It’s simply unacceptable."

On Wednesday, the administration released a map with a partial list of properties that are on the chopping block.

Ranging from office buildings to land parcels, not every property will be sold. Many of the buildings have little or no commercial value and will be destroyed. That will save the government money on operating costs.

Why the move to reform federal property management? There is a lot of money in it.

Agencies are already on track to save $3 billion by the end of next year, and the administration thinks $15 billion can be saved if Congress approves the legislation.

Zients said 60% of the savings would be used to reduce the federal deficit, while the other 40% would be used to finance additional property sales. 

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For nine days, miners more than a mile underground burrowed around the clock to reach one of their own caught in a cave-in _ never wavering from calling the effort a rescue mission.

That changed Easter Sunday as officials announced the death of 53-year-old Larry Marek. His body was discovered in a collapsed portion of the Lucky Friday silver mine were he had been working with his brother.

“Words cannot express the deep sorrow we feel at the tragic loss of our friend, colleague and 30-year veteran of the mining industry. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family, loved ones and friends,” a Hecla Mining Co. statement said.

Marek, a 12-year company employee, and his brother, Mike, had just finished watering down blasted-out rock and ore April 15 in northern Idaho mine when the ceiling of a 6,150-foot deep tunnel collapsed. Mike Marek escaped unharmed.

Rescuers worked on the hope that not all of the 75-foot section of tunnel collapsed and the missing miner had perhaps survived in an open space amid the tons of fallen rock and debris.

Efforts to reach that possible area included an attempt to dig through the collapsed tunnel and building a second intersecting tunnel. But dangerous conditions halted the first effort, and work on the second tunnel slowed as crews encountered increasingly difficult obstacles that required a special tunneling technique to prevent the new tunnel from collapsing.

Then drill holes sent forward Saturday to probe conditions at the end of the tunnel _ where they hoped to find an open area where Marek was working _ found only sand and rubble. Officials said that indicated the entire tunnel collapsed, leaving no space in which the miner might have found refuge.

A company official and a representative of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Administration told the family late Saturday that the rescue mission had changed to a recovery operation.

Sunday morning, the company said it believed Marek was dead. His body was discovered a short while later.

The family declined to comment Sunday.

The company said Sunday it was beginning an in-depth investigation to discover how and why the collapse occurred.

Hecla spokeswoman Melanie Hennessey said the last fatality at the mine occurred in 1986.

The mine employs roughly 275 workers, about 50 of whom were underground in various parts of the mine when the collapse occurred.

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Look for a lot of winners when companies report their first-quarter earnings.

The companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index have surpassed analysts’ profit expectations for two years, or eight straight quarters. Some analysts say they will make it nine straight this earnings season, which begins Monday with a report from aluminum producer Alcoa Inc.

“The longer it persists, the more meaningful it is,” said Adriana Posada, senior portfolio manager with American Beacon who oversees $18.8 billion in mutual fund and pension assets. “There’s a lot more confidence that the economy is in fact improving when earnings continue to surprise” with better-than-expected results.

Credit Suisse analysts wrote in a recent report that they expect companies in the S&P 500 will report total earnings per share of $22.66. That’s 3 percent above what analysts across the industry were expecting at the end of the first quarter. Over the last eight quarters, earnings have beaten expectations by an average of 7 percent.

The difference may sound small, but stocks are priced on the assumption that earnings will meet expectations. If results beat forecasts, expect stocks to go up.

Last earnings season, for example, timber company Weyerhaeuser Co. jumped 3 percent the day it reported adjusted earnings per share of 10 cents. That was double analysts’ expectations.

But the stock market’s gains aren’t uniform during earnings season, J.P. Morgan strategists wrote in a report. They looked at returns for the S&P 500 in the first half of an earnings month, such as April or July, versus the remainder of the month going back to 2009. In the first half, when investors are surprised by the stream of better-than-expected results, they quickly buy. But beating expectations gets less of a reaction later in the month.

Last earnings season, for example, the S&P 500 rose 2.8 percent in the first 10 trading days of January. But the rally fizzled, and the index slipped 0.6 percent over the back half of the month. The same thing happened a year ago. The S&P 500 jumped 3.6 percent in the first 10 trading days of April 2010, but it dropped 2.1 percent over the last 11 days.

Analysts expect most of the growth this earnings season to come from companies that produce metals and other basic materials. They say Alcoa will report earnings per share of 27 cents, for example, according to a survey by FactSet. That’s more than double its earnings of 10 cents per share from a year ago. Alcoa and other materials producers are benefiting from the global economic recovery, which has factories demanding more raw materials.

Other industries whose results are closely tied to the strength of the global economy are also expected to show profit gains of at least 10 percent, such as energy and industrial companies. Analysts expect Exxon Mobil Corp. to report earnings of $1.92 per share, up 44 percent from a year ago. It benefited from higher crude oil prices, which jumped above $100 per barrel during the quarter after starting the year at $91.38.

Total revenue growth for the S&P 500 should top 10 percent for the first time since 2006, S&P senior index analyst Howard Silverblatt expects. Most of the growth is coming from bigger spending by companies, rather than by consumers.

“As sales increase, and at this point 2011 looks like a double-digit gain, companies will commit to producing more, adding a few hours, then maybe a shift, and at some point eventually hiring,” Silverblatt wrote in a recent note. That could lead to higher consumer spending.

Much of the revenue growth for big U.S. companies is also coming from overseas customers, rather than domestic ones. The dollar’s drop against other currencies through the first quarter increased the value of sales made overseas.

To be sure, first-quarter earnings for some companies are under threat because of the earthquake that struck Japan in March. High oil prices during the quarter may also hurt. Delta Air Lines said last month that fewer flights to Japan and more expensive jet fuel will cut its 2011 profit by up to $400 million.

Analysts also forecast first-quarter earnings to weaken for some industries, including telecommunications and utility companies.

Investors had worried that the start of earnings season would be overshadowed by a government shutdown. But that risk was averted late Friday when lawmakers agreed to a last-minute deal to cut about $38 billion in federal spending. The agreement means economic reports will be released as scheduled this week, including updates on international trade, consumer prices, retail sales, industrial production and business inventories.

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Thomas M. Hoenig, the longest serving of the Federal Reserve’s 12 regional bank presidents, announced on Friday that he will retire on Oct. 1.

Hoenig, who had headed the Fed’s Kansas City regional bank since 1991, has opposed the Fed’s efforts to boost the economy through an extended period of low interest rates and the purchase of billions of dollars in Treasury securities.

He dissented against those policies at all eight Fed meetings last year. He argued that the Fed’s efforts to spur growth could kindle future inflation.

His departure had been expected because he will reach the mandatory retirement age for Fed bank presidents of 65 in September.

Hoenig was not joined in his opposition to the Feb policies by other members of the Federal Open Market Committee, the panel of Fed board members and regional bank presidents who set monetary policy. This year, there have been no dissents. Hoenig does not have a vote on the FOMC this year.

Hoenig first joined the Kansas City Fed in 1973 as an economist in bank supervision and his time in that division included the banking crisis of the 1980s. He was involved with regulatory actions on nearly 350 banks that either failed or needed government assistance.

The Kansas City Fed has formed a search committee to select Hoenig’s successor. The successful candidate will need the approval of the directors who serve on the Kansas City Fed’s board.

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“Rising oil prices simply do not have the shock value they once possessed” for U.S. consumers, according to Brian Belski, chief investment strategist at Oppenheimer & Co.

As the CHART OF THE DAY shows, energy accounts for a falling share of household spending, according to data compiled by the Commerce Department. The top panel displays annual rates in billions of dollars, adjusted for inflation.

Gasoline, heating oil and other forms of energy amounted to 3 percent of personal consumption expenditures during last year’s fourth quarter, as the bottom panel indicates. The proportion was 4.3 percent in 1996, when the chart begins.

“We believe consumers have become accustomed to elevated oil prices and have adjusted their spending habits accordingly,” Belski wrote today in a report.

Total outlays increased last quarter to a $9 No teletrack payday loans.43 trillion rate, breaking a record set in the final three months of 2007. The new high occurred even though household spending on energy fell 3 percent from its pace three years earlier.

Even a 20 percent jump in oil prices “should still leave an economic expansion in place,” Bankim Chadha, chief U.S. equity strategist at Deutsche Bank AG, wrote yesterday in a report. Chadha cited energy’s decline as a percentage of consumer expenditures to support his conclusion.

Crude oil climbed 16 percent from Feb. 16, when the commodity’s price began rallying from this year’s low in New York trading, through the end of last week.

(To save a copy of the chart, click here.)

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Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Friday urged countries with large trade surpluses like China to let their currencies rise in value to help prevent another global financial crisis.

He also called on nations with persistent trade deficits like the United States to narrow their budget shortfalls and save more.

Both steps would help balance trade and investment flows among countries, Bernanke said in prepared remarks to a financial conference in Paris. Many countries worry about speculative money flooding their economies and inflating assets like real estate or stocks.