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Obama tries to boost faith in US economic revival
AFP - Thursday, August 19
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COLUMBUS, Ohio (AFP) - – President Barack Obama held a kitchen table summit to try to restore Middle America's sinking faith in his administration's ability to revive the lackluster US economy.
The souring economy and stubbornly high unemployment have seen Obama's poll numbers slump to all-time lows and they are threatening to drag down his fellow Democrats in looming mid-term elections in November.
In the rustbelt city of Columbus, Ohio, Obama sat down with the Weithman family, who he said were typical of how Americans across the country were benefiting from his economic policies.
Exhibit A, he said, was Joe Weithman, who heads up a small architecture firm and held on to two employees during the economic slowdown because of new projects made possible as part of his 787-billion-dollar stimulus package.
Weithman's wife Rhonda not only lost her job last year but was forced to relinquish the medical care coverage it provided.
Thanks to an expansion of stop-gap medical coverage -- a key provision of his hard-fought health care reform bill -- Obama said she was able to "keep her health insurance at a time when the family was very much in need."
The Obama administration is desperate to persuade a skeptical American public that it's economic policies are working, after the latest round of polls showed the president's popularity at a new low.
A Gallup tracking poll taken from Saturday through Monday found his disapproval rating at 51 percent, a new high for the once-popular president, while his average approval rating was at an all-time low of 42 percent.
Experts say unease over the economy is likely at the root of the public's growing dissatisfaction with the administration.
Obama suggested the Weithman family's saga highlighted the benefits of legislation championed by his administration.
"All these things have made a difference, but we still have a long way to go," the president said in the backyard of the Weithman home after the meeting. "We can't go back to the way we were doing things before."
Obama has sought to pile blame on the previous Republican administration for creating the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression and portray himself as the savior who staved off a greater disaster.
"We stabilized the economy. We stabilized the financial system. We didn't have a complete meltdown," Obama told a group of Ohio locals.
"Whereas we were losing jobs in the private sector when I was first sworn in, we're now gaining jobs and we've gained jobs seven consecutive months in the private sector. The economy was shrinking about six percent. The economy is now growing."
But unemployment remains stuck at 9.5 percent -- and is higher in many areas -- while the impact of Obama's great reforms of health care and Wall Street may not be felt for most of the public for years to come.
There is now little time for a turnaround before November's crucial legislative elections which could see Congress switch control back to the Republicans as the sagging economy stokes voter discontent.
Republicans have assailed Obama's economic record, painting him as a socialist whose big government policies have plunged the American economy further into the mire.
At a later fundraiser, Obama hit back and laid the blame for the country's economic woes squarely at the feet of the Republicans who he said had nothing to offer but "cynicism" and "fear."
"I know times are tough out there. And when times are tough, it can be easy to give in to cynicism, easy to give into fear. To set our sights lower. To pin people against each other," he said.
"That's what the other side is counting on in this election. They're not offering new plans, new ideas, they're just offering cynicism, and are offering fear. But that's not who we are, that's not the country I know."
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