House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chair John Mica (Getty Images)

(Washington, DC) President Obama may be ratcheting up the pressure on Congress to pass his jobs plan, but the House's Republican transportation gate-keeper doesn't seem terribly interested in playing along.

House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chair John Mica (R-Fla.) tossed cold water on Obama's call for a national infrastructure bank Thursday night, just minutes after the president told Congress to put partisanship aside and pass his plan quickly.

"We've already had experience with some of these federal grant programs that requires Washington bureaucrats, Washington red tape, Washington approvals and then bowing and scraping to Washington. I'm strongly opposed to any type of a new federal infrastructure bank," Mica said in an interview following the speech.

The White House's vision for the bank includes $10 billion in "seed money" and an independent board to attract private capital to infrastructure projects. The point, of course, is the get the projects going and get workers digging without the taint of big government spending projects now out of favor. It's all part of an overall $50 billion infrastructure proposal in the estimated $447 billion American Jobs Act proposed by Obama last night.

Instead, Mica said he'd be willing to toss some money at the states and de-couple it from federal infrastructure rules. "We have 33 states that have existing state infrastructure banks. People won't need to come to Washington if we empower those existing state infrastructure banks."

After a bruising and bitter partisan summer fight over debt and deficits House Republican leaders have spent this week stressing their desire to cooperate with the White House on areas where they can agree. That could include payroll tax cuts and hiring incentives for businesses. Republicans and Democrats, mostly in the Senate, support the infrastructure bank model, so there is reason to believe that part of Thursday's plan could attract bipartisan support. But Mica's statements appear to cloud the future of an infrastructure bank.

For Mica, new infrastructure programs in a stand-alone jobs bill could undermine tense House-Senate negotiations over reauthorization of the Highway bill. Mica is locked in a battle with Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) over bills that are separated by years in duration and tens of billions of dollars in funding.

Boxer offered her support for Obama's jobs bill, but that's not to say all Democrats are gung-ho. Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), a senior member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee said the proposal wasn't bold enough

"We need a massive investment program in the future of this country to make us competitive in the world economy, and this bill falls short the same way the original stimulus did. As far as I can calculate, about 12% of this bill will be invested in infrastructure. The last time (with) stimulus it was 7%. Fifty percent or more for tax cuts. It's a formula for continued stagnation," DeFazio said after Obama's speech.

Meanwhile, the White House spent Thursday night and Friday blasting out emails heralding support for the plan from Democrats and some corporate leaders.

All the pessimism on the Hill doesn't mean the infrastructure part of Obama's proposal is dead. Obama asked the 12-member deficit reduction panel known as the "supercommittee" to increase its debt-cutting targets to fully pay for the larger plan. In addition, Congress has to wait until next week  to get the American Jobs Act in legislative form. It'll wait another week for Obama to put forward a promised deficit-reduction package that Democrats say could offer 10-year cuts north of $3 trillion, including changes to Social Security and Medicare.

In that context, $50 billion for infrastructure may well find a place to hide.