EMPORIA, VA. — His jacket and tie gone, his shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbow, President Obama reinstated the “Yes we can” mantra of 2008 in pushing his jobs package Tuesday in a gymnasium packed with about 1,300 students, teachers and residents who, as Virginia voters, could help decide the president’s political fate.
Obama implored the friendly crowd at Greensville County High School — his third stop of the day on a bus tour through North Carolina and Virginia — to embrace his $447 billion plan, and insisted that a failure to act had dire consequences for education.
“Here in Greensville County, you’ve lost some teachers. You could lose more if we don’t pass this jobs bill, and that’s not right,” Obama said. “It’s unfair to our kids. It undermines our future. We can’t have other countries adding teachers to prepare their kids for the global economy while we sit by and do nothing.”
The president’s jobs plan failed to pass in the Democratically controlled Senate and is now being divided into separate bills, including measures that would provide funding to local governments to hire teachers, cops and firefighters and money for infrastructure projects. The jobs package would be funded by a tax surcharge on people earning more than $1 million a year, a provision congressional Republicans vehemently oppose.
“So that’s where you come in,” Obama told the Virginians. “I need your voices heard. I need you to give Congress a piece of your mind.”
The message at least resonated in Emporia, where teachers haven’t had a pay raise in four years and unemployment hovers close to 14 percent, far above the national average of 9 percent.
A predominantly black crowd stood in line in 85-degree heat for more than hour for a chance to hear Obama talk at the small school. And while Obama shrugged off cries of “Four more years” in previous stops, he willfully elicited a “Yes we can” chant in a throwback to his 2008 campaign from the Emporia crowd.
“We are good people that want a good life and a fair chance. We don’t want welfare,” said Brenda Kindred of Capron, who snapped photos of Obama from the floor as he spoke. “For the president to come through here, it shows that we’re not too small. And we showed him we’re still on his side.”
On Wednesday, Obama will visit an Air Force base near Hampton and a fire station just outside Richmond before returning to Washington.
Obama’s campaign-style trip on a specially built bus is unlikely to convert any Republican votes in Congress, but the president noted that it was no coincidence that he was traveling through Republican congressional districts.
Obama’s tour of Virginia split state Democrats. Some Democratic lawmakers, including state House Minority Leader Ward Armstrong, have distanced themselves from the president, who became the first Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state in nearly 50 years but has since grown widely unpopular. Some Virginia Democrats have gone so far as to run ads touting their work with Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell rather than embrace Obama.
“There might be some controversy,” said Del. Roslyn Tyler, D-Sussex, “but we need to show our party is dedicated to [Obama’s] message.”
