Recommendations from Obama jobs council have a conservative tilt

President Obama’s jobs council is recommending a series of job-creating proposals with a distinct Republican flavor — just the latest economic message to emerge as Obama prepares for his contest with the eventual Republican nominee.

Obama’s jobs council is calling for an overhaul of the corporate tax structure, expansion of domestic petroleum drilling and a raft of reforms to federal regulation.

As first reported by Reuters, the new corporate tax rates should sink to “internationally competitive levels,” the report says, as well as an “all-in strategy” to cut reliance on foreign fuels by promoting domestic sources.

This is just the latest in the new stream of GOP-sounding policy proposals coming from the White House this year. Last week the proposal was to streamline the government by consolidating federal agencies.

White House officials characterize the proposals as common-sense ideas that the president has been working on for a long time. Next week’s State of the Union address is expected to contain more of the same.

But the packaging has a distinct political upside, coming at a time when GOP presidential hopefuls are offering conservative critiques of Obama’s economic policies.

“This has not been a show council, it has been a work council,” Obama told members of the panel on Tuesday. The group has “generated as good a set of proposals as we have seen coming out of the private sector to help to guide and steer our economic agenda and our approach to jobs and growth over the next couple of years.”

Nevertheless, the suggestions are unlikely to result in sweeping changes to the law over the coming election year.