President Barack Obama on Wednesday launched a ground campaign to defend his vision for the US economy, vowing to revitalize the American middle class in the face of a hostile Congress.
Obama was to travel to three cities Wednesday and Thursday to deliver a series of speeches on accelerating economic growth and creating jobs.
The president planned a robust defense of his stalled economic initiatives, which have been bottled up in the Republican-led House of Representatives — the branch of Congress responsible for managing the nation’s checkbook.
Obama’s top spokesman Jay Carney told US television that the two days of speeches, which come six months into his second term, will provide a blueprint “on where we need to move the economy, where we need to focus in Washington.”
The president’s first speech Wednesday is at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, which he first visited as a newly-elected senator eight years ago.
“It should be focused on what we can do to strengthen and grow the middle class because, when the middle class is thriving, when the middle class is growing, our economy is at its best,” Carney told MSNBC television.
“That’s what we need to do as we move forward in the 21st century.”
Obama’s efforts to reframe the debate over the economy comes with Congress also reloading for a new round of battles over raising the debt ceiling and other economic fights.
Obama and Republican lawmakers are bracing for renewed clashes over spending and the federal budget, which threaten to hurt an economy finally showing signs of stabilizing after tumbling into a deep economic trough.
Republicans have dismissed Obama’s focus on the economy as an effort to seek more spending. “If the president was serious about helping our economy, he wouldn’t give another speech, he’d reach out and actually work with us,” House Speaker John Boehner said Tuesday.
Obama hopes to negotiate a new fiscal compromise by October — the end of the current fiscal year — in order to head off the threat of a government shutdown that could further damage the sluggish recovery.
After the speech in Illinois, Obama was to give an address at the University of Central Missouri, in Warrensburg. And on Thursday he heads to Florida, where he will give a speech at the Jacksonville Port Authority.
Since his last speech in Galesburg, the United States suffered its worst economic crisis in two generations. The jobless rate, at about five percent at the beginning of 2008, soared to twice that figure before drifting downward to its current 7.6 percent after a halting recovery finally began to take hold.
There are also green shoots of a rebounding economy on Wall Street, which has hit record highs in recent weeks.
As the November 2014 midterm elections loom in the distance, another likely battleground, in addition to the budget battles, are coming skirmishes over increasing the debt ceiling.
On Tuesday, Boehner, flagged the battle ahead, vowing at a press conference that “we’re not going to raise the debt ceiling without real cuts in spending. It’s as simple as that.”
Until 2011, both parties in Congress raised the debt ceiling as needed, with little fanfare.
Beginning in 2011, House Republicans have used the threat of the looming debt limit as a bargaining chip for spending cuts.
The White House, for its part, has insisted that Obama will not negotiate over the debt limit, deepening the stalemate.
A new poll Wednesday, one of several this week, showed that stalemate in Washington was exacting a political toll on both sides.
The survey by the Wall Street Journal and NBC gave the president his lowest job approval ratings since August 2011.
The continued political stand-off has proved equally costly to Congress, with 83 percent of Americans saying that they disapprove of the job US lawmakers are doing.
Obama’s 45 percent job performance figure represented a three point fall from just one month ago. The rating is just one point higher than his all-time presidential low, which he hit in August 2011.
Carney said that better cooperation with Congress is also one of the president’s goals.
“There are things that we can do together as a country, that we can do together as Republicans and Democrats, that can continue to grow our economy, continue to create jobs, and make the middle class more secure,” the spokesman said.
“Unfortunately, Washington has been focused on other things, and the president wants to refocus everyone’s attention on what matters.”
Obama defends economic vision, as battles loom
