Public Not Buying Obama's Repeated Attempts to Sell the Stimulus
AP
President Obama travels to Holland, Michigan, today to talk about one of his favorite successes, the recovery act and the investment it provided in the clean energy jobs of the future.
His trip is to participate in the groundbreaking of a new Compact Power advanced battery plant.
According to the White House, "The plant is the ninth of nine new advanced battery factories to start construction as a result of the $2.4 billion in Recovery Act advanced battery and electric vehicle awards the president announced last August. By the day of groundbreaking, Compact Power estimates it will employ 70 in construction jobs. This will rise to 200 by September and 300 at the peak of construction. The factory will hire more than 300 full-time Michigan workers when at scale. The president will discuss how these kinds of investments not only create private sector jobs now, but help American workers and businesses become more competitive."
Recently, the White House has said that the Recovery Act investments will allow the U.S. produce a large segment of the advanced battery market in the next decade and those batteries will be in high demand as more businesses and automobiles go green.
White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer made this point in a statement to Politico: "Today's battery event in Michigan is Exhibit A in the case the White House will make in the coming months: Thanks to the tough steps taken by President Obama and congressional Democrats, a new foundation for a better future is being built, and he products of the future will be made in the USA instead of elsewhere in the world. If our opponents had their way, these jobs and industries would be elsewhere."
But, this week's CBS News Poll shows that most people don't see things that way.
While 38 percent of respondents say that the economy is the most important problem facing the country, 54 percent DISAPPROVE of the president's handing of the economy. And while the White House will make the point that the products of the future will be made in the U.S., it's the jobs of today that most Americans are worried about.
Poll Finds Obama in Summer of Discontent
Michigan's unemployment rate is currently above 13 percent and while no one can take away the benefits of the jobs being created at the Holland plant, the problem is that most Americans still don't believe the Recovery Act worked for them. According to the poll, 63 percent of respondents say that the president's economic programs have not affected them personally, 23 percent say the policies have HURT them and only 13 percent say the programs have helped them personally.
Put another way, a whopping 86 percent of Americans in the new CBS Poll say that they've been unaffected or hurt by the president's economic programs. When asked specifically about the Recovery Act/Stimulus, 56 percent of people say it had no affect and 18 percent say it made the economy worse.
In an editorial in today's Detroit News, House Minority leader says that the president should listen to the residents of Holland when they ask "Where are the jobs?"
Boehner says that Michigan is one of the 48 states to have lost jobs since the stimulus was signed into law. "Since February 2009, our economy has lost roughly 3 million private sector jobs while the federal government has grown by more than 400,000 jobs. More government, fewer jobs: this isn't the picture of recovery; it's the epitome of failure," wrote Boehner.
The battle lines for the midterm elections have been drawn, and according to the CBS poll, the White House has some work to do to change the perception of the work it's done to fix the economy.
Robert Hendin is a CBS News White House producer. You can read more of his posts in Hotsheet here. You can also follow him on Twitter here.
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*#&% up! Stop letting the media tell you what to believe.
Yeah, great philosophy. So who has the authority to change a law if it becomes outdated and irrelevant or just plain recognized as wrong by enlightened individuals? Who is this higher source than government, would that be reform by divine intervention? You have a very stagnant, unprogressive ideology. By your rules, we should never had abolished slavery because laws are unchangeable. Unless changed by the magical higher source than government.
I'm just glad your party isn't in the majority right now. Hopefully it stays that way.
Sorry, no educated person would think we have a democracy. And again, we dont want one!
The Founders, who were obviously much smarter than you, stated they were against deomcracy, because it was the worst form of government.
Again, please educate yourself.
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Uuuhh ok, whatever.
We'll have to agree to disagree.
Please educate yourself. You really need to know what you have here, before you lose it.
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YOU don't want a democracy. There are educated people who would agree with me that we have a democracy. Even Bushy Jr. wanted to spread it throughout the middle east. If you don't like the way things are, move to Texas and reform the Confederate States of America, I'm sure you'll be much happier.
The Founders, who were obviously much smarter than you, stated they were against deomcracy, because it was the worst form of government.
Again, please educate yourself.
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Sorry Mortar. You make some decent points, but this one just blew all of your credibility. Describe how the Constitution was based on the Bible?
"[T]he only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments." Benjamin Rush
"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." John Adams
"Our laws and our institutions must necessarily be based upon and embody the teachings of the Redeemer of mankind. It is impossible that it should be otherwise; and in this sense and to this extent our civilization and our institutions are emphatically Christian." - United States Supreme Court, 1892.
"It cannot be emphasized too strongly that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason peoples of other faiths have been afforded assylum, prosperity and freedom of worship here." Patrick Henry
No, you are dead wrong Dave_P6 - the founders created this nation as a REPUBLIC, NOT A DEMOCRACY.
A republic governs by rule of law; a democracy governs by mob rule.
Get your facts straight before you pop off.
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Um, ok, so you're saying we don't have a democracy? What color is the sky in your world?
Definition of democracy: government by the people; especially : rule of the majority. A government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections
Get your facts straight.
Please educate yourself. You really need to know what you have here, before you lose it.
A Republic recognizes Law is unchangeable, or at least that it can only be changed by a higher source than government. In a Republic the concept of "collective sovereignty" cannot exist, except with recognition that the State or nation, as a body of sovereigns, can speak through one elected voice; though that one voice can never lawfully interfere with the private rights of the individual sovereigns.
"A Constitutional Republic" is a government created and controlled, at least, by the Law of a Constitution. The Constitution of the United States of America was, in Law, a foundation based on the Bible, the Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence. Those documents recognize man?s sovereignty, the divine nature of man?s creation and man?s divine right to Life, Liberty, the means of acquiring and possessing Property, and the pursuit of happiness.
That deficit was the lowest in five years, and the fourth straight decline in deficit spending.
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Typical Republican snow job. The only reason the deficit spending was declining was because they had raised it SO high the previous few years with the unfunded wars and tax cuts. Of course it is going to decline from those bloated levels. That's like when a retail chain marks up the price three-fold then gives you have a half-priced sale.