Posted on 07/06/2012 4:11:44 PM PDT by Libloather
Obama on jobs: 'We've got to grow the economy even faster'
By Bernie Becker - 07/06/12 12:55 PM ET
President Obama called the latest jobs numbers “a step in the right direction” on Friday, even as the June figures showed a third consecutive month of sluggish growth.
Obama, speaking during a two-day campaign swing via bus through the key swing states of Ohio and Pennsylvania, acknowledged that the economy still had a ways to go and was not going to fully recover overnight.
“I want to get back to a time when middle-class families and those working to get into the middle class have some basic security. That's our goal,” Obama, tieless and with his sleeves rolled up, told the crowd at an elementary school in Poland, Ohio. “So we've got to grow the economy even faster.”
The president, saying he wanted to return the middle class to the security they enjoyed in decades past, also firmly contrasted his policies with that of his presumptive GOP nominee, Mitt Romney, and declared that voters could help break the “stalemate” in Washington.
“We've got to deal with what's been happening over the last decade, last 15 years: manufacturing leaving our shores, incomes flat-lining,” Obama said. “All those things are what we've got to struggle and fight for.”
Obama’s comments came the same day that the Labor Department announced that the U.S. economy created 80,000 jobs in June, with the unemployment rate holding steady at 8.2 percent. Romney described the figures as a “kick to the gut” and blamed Obama’s policies for slowing the economy.
The economy has added an average of more than 200,000 jobs a month between January, February and March, as the country experienced a mild winter. But since then, job creation has plummeted, with between 68,000 and 80,000 jobs created in the last three months.
Striking a populist tone for a second consecutive day, Obama asserted the way to create a more secure middle-class was to build the economy from the bottom up — not the top-down approach that he said Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, and other Republicans prefer.
The GOP, Obama said, not only wanted to allow the wealthiest to pay less in taxes, but also wanted to scrap regulations that he said would rein in Wall Street and stand in the way of the sort of financial crisis the country experienced in 2008.
And the president, traveling through the Rust Belt, continued to advertise his efforts to buck up the U.S. automobile industry, and the domestic manufacturing sector in general.
That work, he declared, was a stark contrast to Romney’s experience in the private equity sector, with Obama dubbing Romney’s Bain Capital the “pioneers” of outsourcing.
“That's his experience. My experience is working with workers and management to save the auto industry,” Obama said. “That's your choice. Because I'm going to fight for your jobs here in the United States.”
For his part, Romney, armed with a third consecutive lackluster jobs report, said the June numbers showed the president’s policies had failed to give the economy the spark it needed.
“This kick in the gut has got to end,” Romney said, temporarily breaking from a vacation in New Hampshire.
Other top Republicans, like House Speaker John Boehner (Ohio), said the report showed that the private sector was not “doing fine,” as Obama had said during a recent news conference.
The president’s swing through Ohio and Pennsylvania, scheduled to wrap up Friday, underscores how crucial the two states are to both campaigns.
No Republican candidate has ever won the presidency without capturing Ohio, and the last president to take the Oval Office without winning the Buckeye State was John F. Kennedy more than a half-century ago.
And with this November’s election expected to be close, Obama could be hard-pressed to replace the 20 electoral votes that Pennsylvania, which has voted Democratic in the last five presidential campaigns, has to offer.
Both Obama and Romney are also likely to face hurdles as they try to sell voters on their economic vision.
Given Friday’s numbers, Obama, should he win a second term, is almost certain to have done so with the highest unemployment rate of any incumbent president since the Great Depression.
But while the national unemployment rate is stuck at 8.2 percent, the rate is much lower in some key swing states. Both Ohio and Pennsylvania, according to the latest Labor Department numbers, have jobless rates below 7.5 percent.
With that in mind, Obama also used his Friday speech to talk up his healthcare law, and the recent deal that will extend current interest rates on student loans, while also declaring that he would push to end tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas.
He also suggested that wealthier taxpayers, like himself and Romney, can and should pay more in taxes to eat into runaway deficits, instead of cutting needed programs.
“I've talked to my accountant,” Obama said. “He said, ‘You can do a little more.’ And I sure know Mr. Romney can do a little more.”
And with the Romney campaign now saying it raised some $100 million in June, Obama also told his Ohio crowd to be prepared for a barrage of negative advertisements over the next four months.
“It is all right, because I'm tough,” Obama said. “I’m skinny but I’m tough.”
The bad news - four more months more to go.
And that’s - four more months more to more go.
Economy? Didn’t he mean ‘government’?
So by making this comment the economy was growing fast and now we have to grow it faster, especially right before the election? Dumba##
He’s skinny but he isn’t tough. He is actually pretty weak minded with a fragile ego.
"The same way the slaves built the pyramids!"
“’We’ve got to grow the economy even faster’”
Didn’t the GDP only grow 1.9% as last reported?
Isn’t this like saying slowing down is speeding up?
Socialism....shameless all the way to hell.
Why would people be insecure?
Baraq has given them everything...
99 weeks of unemployment
record amounts of food stamps
“free” healthcare
cash for their clunker
free cell phones
$10 high speed internet
subsidized education loans and grants
For everybody: oath, schmoath! The fascists/commies NEVER cared about what they said: hitler, lenin, stalin, kim, mao, chavez, castro, mugabe, khadafi...obozo (need more names?)
I am former soviet union citizen. I lived those lies for almost 50 years.
And I never trust people who blabber about disgusting gazillionaires and at the same time eat waguy beef, crabs, arugula (up to this day I never seen it in my local Safeway), drink 25 year old scotch, incessantly play golf (does obozo know how?), vacation in the most expensive places: Paris, Spain, Martha Vineyard (what a joke that is!) and tell us that we have to stop lavishing with the resources we have!
Poor black boy, who just started enjoying life in those dam*&^# United States and now he and his poor black wife are threatened to return back to the ghetto!
How nice it is to have a throat of cast iron and absolutely no conscience. What a bunch of sociopaths we have in American government right now!
Recent photos I've seen are showing emaciated. He looks unwell.
Yea... Oh he"s so tuff...NOT
So far, we maintain our advantage over North Korea and Cuba....
But we may be fast losing even that small margin.
No matter how the smart guys may be trying to dress this up - our economy is actually CONTRACTING, and we have been listening to cheerful (albeit forced) reports of “growth”, that while slow, were “encouraging”.
We are in Great Depression II, and it does not stop at our national boundaries.
Though Canada, in their usual bouncy way, doesn’t seem to be troubled by the general gloomy outlook. They still produce and EXPORT some very valuable commodities.
While this country’s current regime seems more and more determined to keep our resources locked up, for whatever arcane reason.
If only the current regime would just stop trying to “fix” things....
So having to ship jobs overseas because taxes are so high and regulations so onerous here is actually a tax break granted by our government...
Err. Zero should have done that the first year. Way faster.
This is like a 1943 FDR saying he wants to stop Hitler at the Czec border.
“Even faster?”
Once again, we didn’t gain enough jobs to keep up with the growth in population—meaning we slipped further behind.
“So we’ve got to grow the economy even faster.”
Yeah, raising taxes should bet the ticket.
About as connected to reality as a 6-year-old demanding more and better Christmas presents after Dad has lost his job. This poltroon does not have the remotest idea what a market economy even looks like, let alone how to grow it.
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