President Obama has shifted into overdrive to sell his economic policies in states vital to his re-election in a not-so-subtle admission that the sputtering recovery is his biggest political vulnerability heading into the 2012 campaign. “Today, the single most serious economic problem we face is getting people back to work,” Obama said Monday, arguing that job creation is central to the debates in Washington over cutting spending and raising the country’s debt limit.
After spending more than $800 billion on the federal stimulus package, Obama’s options are limited when it comes to spurring job growth through new spending, especially with the country set to reach its debt limit by Aug. 2.
So in North Carolina, where Obama won his narrowest victory in 2008, the president rolled out a newly minted strategy aimed at harnessing private-sector funding to create engineering jobs.
“With the leadership of the jobs council, we’re announcing an all-hands-on-deck strategy to train 10,000 new American engineers every year,” Obama said at a clean energy plant in Durham, N.C. He was quick to point out that the plan would not cost taxpayers.
“And by the way, our jobs council … they’re doing this not counting on a whole bunch of federal funding,” he said. “Private-sector companies are teaming up to help us promote [science, technology, engineering and math] education, to offer students incentives to finish those degrees, and then to help universities fund those programs.”
Obama carried his jobs-focused message to the politically important state of Florida on Monday night, as Republican presidential candidates gathered in New Hampshire for the first major GOP debate of the campaign.
On Capitol Hill, Republican leaders dismissed Obama’s speech as a political tactic to divert attention from dismal unemployment numbers and talk of a double-dip recession.
Obama has tried to characterize the troubling economic data as a mere “bump in the road” to recovery.
“Every time I look at the data, every time I look at all the formidable challenges that are before us … I’m always struck by the fact that these are solvable problems,” he told his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.
“We stabilized the economy, we prevented a financial meltdown, and an economy that was shrinking is now growing. We’ve added more than 2 million private-sector jobs over the last 15 months alone,” he said.
Concerned that his optimistic message is falling on deaf ears, the president pleaded with his jobs council to back him up and advertise “that the sky is not falling.”
“You guys can amplify that probably more effectively than I can,” Obama said, “because when I say it, you know, I’m an elected official — I’m a president, I’m supposed to say that.”
