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Obama Rallies the Troops with Speech in Poland
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POLAND, Ohio – In his stump speech to the Democratic faithful at Dobbins Elementary School Friday morning, President Barack Obama hit the four themes of his campaign for reelection:
- He and the likely Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, have “two fundamentally different visions of how America moves forward.”
- Far too many citizens feel as if the social contract has been broken and, along with it, the promise of America.
- It will take more time to emerge from the worst recession the United States has experienced since the Great Depression.
- The solutions the Republicans advocate led to the Great Recession. Their economic theories didn’t work when George W. Bush was president and won’t work if Mitt Romney is elected.
Chants of “Four More Years” preceded his arrival and often interrupted his remarks. Some 300 people crowded into the school’s small gynasium, redecorated with “Betting on America” signage prepared by the Obama campaign. This is the second day of Obama's bus trip across Ohio and Pennsylvania. This morning he ate breakfast at a diner in Akron; this afternoon the bus trip concludes with a stop at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
The president continues to believe in the promise of America, he said, and is working to restore the country in which he grew up, where “hard work was rewarded and character was respected. … No one expected to get fabulously rich, although some did. Rich was spending time with your family.”
The America where he grew up, the president said, was one that “extended ladders of opportunity to get into the middle class.” Among the programs under siege are those helping students attend universities and community colleges and promoting home ownership. Obama said he is happy that Congress did not allow the interest rates on college loans to double, the legislators acting just in time last week.
But he wants Congress to adopt a program that allows Americans to feel secure in keeping the titles to their residences, especially those under water, that is, who owe more on their mortgages than their residences are valued. If Congress passed Obama’s initiatives, he said, Americans under water could save $3,000 in payments and be more secure in knowing they wouldn’t be evicted.
Regardless, “For too many people, it felt like that bargain [if you work hard, you’ll get ahead] was slipping away. The cost of everything went up faster than people’s incomes” from the mid ‘70s on.
Parents have not believed that their children will have a better life than they have, Obama stated. “They didn’t expect the worst economic, the worst financial crisis in our lifetime” in 2007.
“How do we put the bargain back together?” he asked rhetorically. “We knew it wasn’t going to happen overnight.”
That seemed to be his response to this morning’s paltry jobs numbers released by the U.S. Department of Commerce; only 80,000 jobs were created in June after a tepid 77,000 in May. The national unemployment rate remains unchanged at 8.2%.
The president reminded his audience that, “4.4 million jobs have been added in the last 28 months, including 500,000 manufacturing jobs.”
So the 80,000 announced this morning, one that simply keeps pace with population growth, “That’s a step in the right direction. But our goal is to get back to where there’s security for the middle class. … Our mission is not to get back to where we were before the recession began” but to create the jobs that will reflect a more robust recovery and reduce unemployment significantly.
“What’s holding us back,” Obama said, “is the stalemate in Washington.”
“Put Congress back to work,” yelled someone in the audience.
“I’m trying to,” the president replied.
“This election is about breaking the stalemate,” he continued without missing a beat.
He began referring to his likely opponent and the Republican Party’s trickle-down theory, although he did not use that term.
Were Congress to repeal the regulations that result in a cleaner environment and rein in the risks Wall Street took that jeopardized the global financial system, one can assume only the wealthy would benefit, the president said.
“Insurance companies could deny [coverage] or pre-existing conditions,” he added.
Although he did not name his predecessor in the Oval Office, Obama said this country “was fighting two wars on a credit card [and] cutting taxes turned a surplus into a deficit.” Since he took office, U.S. combat forces have exited Iraq and are “transitioning out of Afghanistan.”
The savings in military spending will be applied to reducing the deficit and not the national debt, Obama said.
“We need to do some nation building in America,” the president asserted, “and apply the savings to the deficit.”
And he reminded his audience that Romney urged letting Detroit go bankrupt rather than have the federal government intervene. With one in eight Ohioans dependent on the auto industry for their paychecks, the president drew cheers when he noted, “Chrysler is back. GM [has regained its position as] the largest [automaker] in the world. And Ford is on the move.
“I believe what happened in the auto industry can happen in other industries,” Obama said, as he praised the attributes of the American worker.
The president said he would change the tax code to give breaks to companies that create jobs in the United States and repeal those that give breaks to those who ship jobs abroad. Here he noted that Romney and Bain Capital, the venture capital company the Republican founded, have been recognized “as pioneers of outsourcing.”
He also defended the Affordable Health Care Act and recognized former U.S. Rep. John Boccieri, “who may have lost his seat [in Congress] because he voted for it,” the president said, “because it was the right thing to do.”
And Obama again called upon the wealthiest Americans “to pay their fair share.”
Many wealthy Americans have assured the president they support his efforts to end the Bush-era tax breaks. “They understand that if you get all these blessings, you’ve got to give something back,” Obama said. He understands that, he said.
“I talked to my accountant,” Obama said, adding he’s willing to pay more. “I’m sure Mr. Romney can do more.”
In his vision of America, Obama said, “All these things are tied together. Everybody plays by the rules. A lot of us understood that [in 2008]. … Stand with me and we’ll finish what we started in 2008.”
Obama was introduced by Daniel Potkanowicz, a maintenance mechanic at Summer Garden Food Manufacturing Inc., the Boardman plant the president toured before departing for his speech here.
Potkanowicz explained how he operated his own business until he lost it in the wake of the Great Recession. The job-creation policies of the Obama Administration led to Summer Garden being able to build its plant on McClurg Road, hire him and 57 others, and now embark on ab $11 million expansion of its food processing plant.
“President Obama has our back,” he said. "Let's show him we’ve got his back.”
EDITOR'S NOTE: Watch for video of President Obama's speech in our "3 Minutes With" video segment posted at our home page.
Copyright 2012 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.