The Hill News

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R - Ala.), the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, doubled down on his comments Thursday night that President Obama "just doesn't get it" with his jobs proposal announced Thursday night.

"We need to be reducing spending generally, we need to be reducing debt now," Sessions said Friday on Fox News. "You can't say you're reducing debt when you're increasing debt, and that's all we're doing, adding $450 billion to the debt."

Last night, Sessions said that the president's plan - which asks the debt "supercommittee" to add the cost to its' cost-cutting mission - “makes a mockery of the recent debt limit deal.”

Sessions was not impressed by the president's promise that his jobs package would be paid for.

"I'm not sure this is a sound approach because I truly believe it's the debt itself that's pulling down growth," Sessions said on Fox. "We need to be reducing spending generally, we need to be reducing debt now."

While the senator echoed the concerns of many conservatives after hearing the president's job speech last night, Republican leadership has been slightly more conciliatory. 

"There was plenty in there and policy-wise, there are some things that sort of resonate with the Republicans," Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said on Fox News Thursday night. "I mean, when you start talking about tax relief for small business owners, that's something that we've been talking about for several years now. When you start talking about streamlining bureaucracy, so that you can get more bang for the buck, if you will, in infrastructure spending, fine."

White House spokesman said Friday morning that while the president "welcome[s] the conciliatory tone that Speaker Boehner took, and Majority Leader Cantor," he wasn't surprised by criticism like that levied by Sessions.

"We don't expect suddenly for harmony and happiness to break down on Capitol Hill," Carney said. "We don't expect those who are the President's political opposites or opponents to do this because we ask them to. We hope and expect that they will do it because the American people ask that they do it."