President Obama over the next two days will go before the Virginia voters who helped catapult him to victory in 2008 and who have grown increasingly more important to his re-election bid. Obama has three planned appearances — one Tuesday and two on Wednesday — as he wraps up a three-day bus tour through North Carolina and Virginia touting a jobs plan that will have to move through Congress in pieces if it has any chance of making it to the president’s desk.
Tuesday’s stop is at Greensville County High School in Emporia. On Wednesday, he’ll visit Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Hampton and a fire station outside Richmond. The intended message to voters is clear: If Republicans don’t get behind the American Jobs Act, local governments will have to lay off teachers and firefighters, and veterans will have a tougher time finding work.
“If they vote against taking steps that we know will put Americans back to work right now then they’re not going to have to answer to me,” Obama said Monday at Asheville Regional Airport in North Carolina. “They’re going to have to answer to you.”
But that could be a hard sell in a state that has grown disenchanted with Obama since his historic victory there in 2008. A poll released Monday by Christopher Newport University and the Richmond Times-Dispatch shows that 52 percent of Virginia voters now disapprove of the Democratic president.
“Have the Republicans in Congress done a better job? We have a 9 percent [national] unemployment rate. Nobody should be doing well,” said Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., who will join Obama in Virginia.
Obama still insists he wants his entire $447 billion jobs package even if it has to be broken into pieces to pass. Democrats will push his plan to give money to local governments, fund infrastructure projects and cut the payroll tax.
In Hampton, Obama will also push a tax credit for employers hiring military veterans. On that point, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, a Republican and a veteran, at least wants to hear the details and will appear with Obama and first lady Michelle Obama at the Air Force base.
But House Democrats worry that the White House’s piecemeal approach could allow key elements of the bill to be defeated, particularly the funding source — a tax surcharge on people who earn more than $1 million a year.
