When the going gets tough, and it seems like everything is falling apart, everyone likes to retreat to their safe place.
Some find comfort in their faith. Others find comfort in family.
For President Obama, it’s a “pivot” to jobs and the economy.
Now, it’s not exactly new for a U.S. president to lobby for increased infrastructure spending. But it’s always interesting to watch for when the Obama administration trots out another “big” policy speech on American jobs and investing in infrastructure.
And “roads and bridges.”
My goodness, but the president does enjoy talking about “roads and bridges.” So much so, in fact, that it has been a common theme of his nearly six years in the White House.
“First-class infrastructure attracts first-class jobs. Business owners don’t seek out crumbling roads and bridges.” —Obama #RebuildAmerica
— White House Archived (@ObamaWhiteHouse) May 14, 2014
.@PressSec says Pres Obama wants legislation that “invests substantially in rebuilding our roads and bridges…putting people to work.”
— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) May 13, 2014
“Roads and bridges should not be a partisan issue,” says Pres Obama in advocating more job-creating transportation infrastructure projects.
— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) February 26, 2014
Pres Obama says LaHood has “fought to create jobs and grow our economy by rebuilding our roads, bridges and transit systems.”
— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) January 29, 2013
Warren: “President Obama believes in a country where we invest in education, in roads and bridges, in science, and in the future.”
— OFA (@OFA) September 6, 2012
The president took his oft-repeated call for more infrastructure spending on the road earlier this week, accusing Republicans of blocking his attempts to repair the nations (you guessed it!) “roads and bridges.”
“It’s not crazy, it’s not socialism. It’s not the imperial presidency — no laws are broken. We’re just building roads and bridges like we’ve been doing for the last, I don’t know, 50, 100 years,” Obama said during a speech in Washington, D.C.
Republicans “are patriots,” he added. “[T]hey love their country. They love their families. They just have a flawed theory of the economy that they can’t seem to get past.”
“Economic patriotism says that instead of stacking the deck in the favor of folks just at the top, let’s harness the talents and ingenuity of every American and give every child access to quality education, and make sure that if your job was stamped obsolete or shipped overseas, you’re going to get retrained for an even better job,” he said.
The White House is currently locked in a battle over how best to replenish the soon-to-be insolvent Highway Trust Fund, with Republicans demanding spending cuts to offset any new financial investments in the nation’s transportation system.
(H/T: @redsteeze)
