Obama to make statement on economy
President Obama will make a statement on the economy Thursday morning, a last-minute addition to his schedule, wherein he’s expected to appeal to Congress, once again, to act on the his proposed jobs package.
He is scheduled to be in the press room at 10:15 a.m. He could take a few questions from the press.
The move comes as Obama has faced a series of bad news in recent weeks: disappointing jobs numbers last Friday, a Democratic loss in Tuesday’s Wisconsin recall, being out-raised by GOP rival Mitt Romney for the month of May.
{mosads}”The president will deliver a statement on the economy, calling on Congress to pass the bipartisan, paid-for ideas that the president proposed last year to put construction workers back to work upgrading our roads and bridges, teachers back in the classroom educating our kids and police and firefighters back on the job keeping our communities safe,” the White House said in its Friday morning announcement.
The president is also expected to discuss the state of the economy and continuing concerns over the stability of the euro. The release of disappointing jobs numbers last Friday has dogged the president throughout the week, providing political fodder for Republicans arguing the president’s economic policies aren’t working.
The economy is the No. 1 issue facing Obama as he heads into November’s election.
He addressed his jobs bill during a speech Thursday in Nevada, telling students at the University of Las Vegas that Congress “can’t just sit on their hands” while the economy struggles.
“Last September, I sent to Congress a jobs bill full of the kinds of ideas that, historically, Republicans and Democrats have supported. If they had taken all the steps I was pushing for back in September, we could have put even more Americans back to work. We could have sliced through these headwinds more easily,” Obama said.
“They haven’t acted fast enough on the other ideas that economists, independent economists — not me, but folks who study this stuff for a living — say could have put over a million more people to work,” the president added. “Now, there’s no excuse for that. When so many people are still out there pounding the pavement and sending out resumes, so many families are doing whatever it takes to pay the bills — Congress can’t just sit on their hands.”
Romney has hammered the president repeatedly on the economy.
On Thursday in St. Louis, the presumptive GOP nominee blasted Obama’s economic policies as “a moral failure of tragic proportions.”
“Sadly, it has become clear that this president simply doesn’t understand or appreciate these fundamental truths of our system. Over the last three and a half years, record numbers of Americans have lost their jobs or just disappeared from the workforce or can only find part-time jobs,” Romney said.
— Amie Parnes contributed.
— This story was updated at 9:28 a.m.
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