Well, what can I say about Obama’s visit to Racine?
Kringle sales will get a boost, thanks to repeated mentions by the pool reporter (and the president).
His prepared remarks covered why Congress needs to continue helping the little guy by passing financial regulation reform and a clean energy bill.
As expected, he took a lot of swipes at Republicans, BP and Wall Street giants.
Obama mocked House Minority Leader John Boehner’s comment that the financial regulation reform bill was like “killing an ant with a nuclear weapon.”
Obama called Boehner “out of touch” and told him to talk to the folks in Racine, a city that has the second highest unemployment rate in the state, and see if they think the financial crisiswhich led to the lost of almost 8 million jobswas an “ant.”
That was a pretty big applause line.
And Obama reminded the crowd over and over again that Republican policies are what drove the economy into the ditch and that it would take time to revive it. “Some of these challenges have been building up for decades,” he explained.
He didn’t call for a ton of more spending, but he did call on Congress to pass financial reform, add more clean energy jobs, and hold corporations (like BP) accountable for their misdeeds.
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He said the debate wasn’t about big government or small government but about “responsible government.”
He also took a few questions from the crowd about helping struggling homeowners; using diplomacy as well as military might abroad; providing veterans with adequate resources, especially for PTSD; and defending last year’s stimulus package.
He said people have a “real and legitimate concern” about spending. But he argued that without last year’s stimulus the economy would have been a “catastrophe” and that it’s difficult to talk about what might have been. He explained that a third of the stimulus was tax cuts for 95% of us, and that it arrived in small portions in weekly paychecks. He said that was the wise thing to do, since economists said that would lead to increased spending. But he said that because it seemed invisible it wasn’t such a hot thing politically.
“If I was just thinking about the politics I would have sent you a check with my picture on it and said ‘Here’s your tax cut,’” Obama said.
He said the government still needs to support small businesses and that more stimulus-generated projects would be apparent in the coming months.
I suppose that Obama's visit gives Wisconsin residents a shot in the arm during a distressing season of an unending oil spill, intractable infighting in Washington, and impatience with the economy. At the very least, O&H Bakery in Racine should be feeling a little love.
