A passionate speech to auto industry workers aimed at deflecting public anger over policy gridlock in Washington, Obama said the refusal to put country ahead of party "has got to stop."
His hopes for reelection in 2012 will hinge on his success in lowering unemployment, currently pinned above 9 percent, and boosting sluggish economic growth, and he promised to deliver fresh approaches.
"I'll be laying out more proposals in the days ahead," Obama, a Democrat, said. The problem was not a lack of answers to the pressing issue of economic growth and hiring, rather it was people "playing political games," he said.
But Obama did not spell out any new initiatives beyond renewing his call for Congress to extend a payroll tax cut, advance trade pacts with South Korea, Panama and Colombia, and deliver patent reform.
The president has few tools left to stoke growth. Fiscal stimulus efforts during the 2008-2009 recession, including a multibillion-dollar auto industry bailout, have vastly expanded the budget deficit. Now the United States is under market pressure to slash it or face higher funding costs.
Republicans on Capitol Hill -- and on the presidential campaign trail -- strongly oppose big, new spending programs and are giving the White House little wiggle room to boost hiring through public works programs or business incentives.
"There are some folks in Congress who would rather see their opponents lose than see America win," Obama told an audience at a battery facility in Michigan, a car-producing state that was hard hit by the recession and which he hopes to win again in the 2012 election.
Critics complain the president has failed to assure Americans during one of the worst weeks in the stock market since he took office amid the financial crisis in January 2009.
But the president remains more popular than Congress, whose approval rating slumped after a toxic debate to lift the U.S. debt ceiling prompted a downgrade of the nation's AAA credit rating by Standard & Poor's and an ensuing stock market rout.
Markets have whipsawed this week. U.S. stocks shot up 4 percent on Thursday.
Obama blamed the violent market gyrations on forces beyond his control, noting European financial turmoil was "lapping up" on U.S. shores, while the credit rating downgrade had been a "self-inflicted wound.
Rather, the president said, echoing what his aides have been saying privately for days, “What I figure is, they need to spend more time out here, listening to you, and hearing how fed up you are.”
It is a sign, perhaps, of the White House’s desperate search for a way forward that Mr. Obama is hoping that American voters — who are deeply disgusted with Congress, but not exactly thrilled with him either, according to recent polls — will somehow rise en masse and make their representatives see the error of their ways.
“If they’re listening hard enough,” he said, “maybe they’ll come back ready to compromise, ready to do what you sent them there to do.”
That may be a tall order. Even before Air Force One had left the Washington area on Thursday morning to ferry Mr. Obama here to talk about better fuel efficiency and how his auto bailout had saved the country’s car and truck industry, House Republicans were criticizing his trip.
The office of the House majority leader, Eric Cantor of Virginia, put out this statement:
“While the goal of promoting more fuel-efficient vehicles is laudable, such costly new regulations will only create more obstacles to growth and make it harder for working families and small businesses. With 10.5 percent unemployment in the Great Lakes State, the president should explain to people of Michigan how his calls for tax increases and new regulations will create jobs or spur economic growth.”
And, lest anyone think that Republicans were having any second thoughts after Mr. Obama spoke, Speaker John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, lobbed this statement: “President Obama likes to talk about being ‘the adult in the room’—but there’s nothing ‘adult’ about political grandstanding. If the president wants to do something productive, he can start by delivering on his promise to outline his own recommendations to rein in the massive deficits and debt that are undermining job creation in our country.”
For Mr. Obama, Thursday’s trip, coming at perhaps the lowest point in his presidency, was a chance to try to regain his footing and present himself as an assured leader with programs and proposals that will help put the American economy back on track and make the country more competitive globally.
But Mr. Obama spent most of his remarks assailing the Congressional Republicans who have knocked down most of his proposals. At times, the president sounded angry, noteworthy since he is famous for rarely losing his cool. He called the credit downgrade “a self-inflicted wound,” and added: “That’s why people are frustrated. You can hear it in my voice; that’s why I’m frustrated.”
There’s nothing wrong with our country,” Mr. Obama said, speaking at Johnson Controls, a maker of battery systems. “There’s something wrong with our politics.”
Mr. Obama characterized the last few months in Washington as the “worst kind of partisanship, the worst kind of gridlock,” which he said had “made things worse instead of better.”
He reiterated his calls for an extension of the payroll tax cut, and for a road construction bill, intended to get workers back on the job on infrastructure projects. Of course, those ideas would need Congressional approval.
After Michigan, Mr. Obama headed to New York to attend two Democratic fund-raisers to bring in money for the 2012 elections. That leg of his trip coincided with the Republican presidential debate in Iowa on Thursday night.
The White House press secretary, Jay Carney, speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Michigan, said he was curious “whether anyone participating in the debate tonight will have any concrete proposals.
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