PRESIDENT Barack Obama has taken his case for a massive economic stimulus package directly to Americans on the front line of the recession, holding a town hall meeting in an Indiana town with the highest jobless rate in the country. During an hour-long question and answer session in Elkhart, Mr Obama admitted that the $827 billion plan going through Congress is not perfect but warned that failure to approve it will lead to economic disaster.
“More people will lose their homes and their healthcare. And our nation will sink into a crisis that, at some point, we may be unable to reverse,” he said.
“So we can no longer afford to wait and see and hope for the best. We can no longer posture and bicker and resort to the same failed ideas that got us into this mess in the first place – and that the American people rejected at the polls this past November.”
The president received an enthusiastic welcome in Elkhart, an industrial town of 53,000 people where unemployment has tripled over the past year to more than 15 per cent. Yesterday’s event recalled the atmosphere of his campaign rallies last year, with many in the audience waving Obama/Biden T-shirts and interrupting Mr Obama’s remarks with cheers and applause.
The Senate is expected to approve the economic stimulus Bill today with the support of all Democrats and three moderate Republicans. It was approved last month by the House of Representatives without a single Republican vote but a Gallup poll yesterday showed that two out of three Americans approve of the president’s handling of the Bill.
Some 58 per cent of those polled said they disapprove of the way congressional Republicans have handled the economic stimulus plan and White House aides made clear yesterday that the president is determined to rally public opinion to keep pressure on his critics.
“The American people are desperate for us to act. They understand that we’re in crisis. They’re living it every single day,” senior adviser David Axelrod said before yesterday’s town hall meeting.
“They’re not into the machinations that folks in Washington are. They’re not sweating this detail or that detail. They’re certainly not buying into the argument that, you know, the new deal was a failure and we shouldn’t intervene.”
Mr Obama defended his decision to use the stimulus plan to promote long-term policy goals, including energy independence, improved education and lower healthcare costs. He suggested that extra government spending would have a “multiplier effect” by creating jobs in the short term while building the infrastructure for a stronger economic future.
“Doesn’t it make sense, if we’re going to spend all this money, to solve some of the problems that have been around for a long time?”
The president, who was due to address the economic crisis in his first White House press conference last night, will hold a second town hall meeting today, in Fort Meyer, Florida, which has one of the highest rates of home foreclosure in the US. On Thursday, he will visit a Caterpillar factory in Peoria, Illinois.
After a failed attempt to win bipartisan support for the stimulus package, Mr Obama has adopted a more combative tone in recent days, reminding Republicans that he won last November’s election on a promise to change direction in Washington.
“I also can’t tell you with 100 per cent certainty that everything in this plan will work exactly as we hope. But I can tell you with complete confidence that endless delay or paralysis in Washington in the face of this crisis will bring only deepening disaster,” he said yesterday.
“We’ve had a good debate. Now it’s time to act. That’s why I am calling on Congress to pass this Bill immediately.”