Obama's New York Trip: Upbeat about the Economy, Praises Self For Arresting Economic Freefall
On his visit to New York as part of his “White House to Main Street” tour, President Obama in a speech said that he was pretty confident that the economic condition would improve in the very near future.
Addressing a crowd at a manufacturing plant in Buffalo, he said that job growth would continue and that “next year is going to be better than this year.” He fell short of actually patting himself when he credited himself for breaking the “economic freefall” the nation faced when he took office 16 months ago.
“We can say beyond a shadow of a doubt today we are headed in the right direction,” Mr. Obama told an audience of about 230 workers and local business leaders. “All those tough steps we took, they’re working, despite all the naysayers who were predicting failure a year ago.”
In the past Obama has generally been prudent about heralding economic good times. With the national unemployment rate nearing 10 per cent, Obama says that the people would have to be patient while the nation fights back recession.
He repeated that message here — “I won’t stand here and say we’ve climbed all the way out of the hole,” Mr. Obama said — but his tone was decidedly optimistic.
The forecast for Democrates for the upcoming Congressional elections is gloomy; Obama has to convince the voters that he and his fellow Democrates have helped the nation in getting past the worst of the recession.
While the Obama administration has repeatedly promised the citizens that their sole aim would be the creation of new jobs, more often than not they have been side tracked with other issues like a health care bill, financial regulatory reform, an oil spill, an attempted terrorist attack in New York City.
Later on Mr. Obama flew to Manhattan, where his focus shifted to campaign cash collection. He got a whopping $1.3 million for the Democratic Campaign Committee at a fund-raiser where the cost of a single ticket was $15,000 and where V.I.P. couples paid $50,000 for a private reception with the president.
The president also visited the New York Police Department’s Real Time Crime Center, where he was shown the pictures of Faisal Shahzad, prime accused in the failed Times Square bombing bid.
