PROVIDENCE, R.I. - President Obama on Friday promoted his proposals to raise wages and expand benefits for working women, making an election-season push to portray Republicans as stuck in the past and hindering an economic recovery.
'We need Republicans in Congress to stop blocking a minimum-wage increase,' Mr. Obama said at Rhode Island College, where he highlighted elements of his agenda aimed at helping women, including paid leave, pay equity and the health care law's required insurance coverage for mammograms.
'We've got to raise our voices,' the president said, to 'do away with policies and politicians that belong in a 'Mad Men' episode.' He was referring to the period television drama focusing on a male-dominated advertising agency in the 1960s.
The speech came in the middle of a campaign swing Mr. Obama is making through Democratic strongholds in advance of next week's elections, but it steered almost entirely clear of electoral politics.
Instead, the president's comments were carefully tailored to burnish his credentials and boost his party's image with women, an influential voting bloc, without explicitly tying Democratic candidates to Mr. Obama. In one of his final appearances before the midterm congressional contests next Tuesday in which his party's control of the Senate is at stake, the president never mentioned voting or the campaign.
'This shouldn't be partisan,' he said at one point.
Mr. Obama refrained from linking his agenda to the election or to Democratic candidates as he did earlier this month during an economic speech in Evanston, Ill., in which he said his economic policies were 'on the ballot' this fall even though he personally was not. That remark drew grumbling from some Democrats and party strategists who said it risked undermining candidates' attempts to appeal to swing voters who are dissatisfied with Mr. Obama.
Still, the president seized the opportunity on Friday to claim credit for fueling an economic recovery and making health care more affordable over the opposition of Republicans.
'No matter how many times Republicans threaten to repeal this law, we're going to keep it in place,' Mr. Obama said of the Affordable Care Act, claiming vindication about its key provisions. 'I'm pretty sure that, you know, in 10 years they're not going to call it 'Obamacare' anymore. Republicans will be like, 'Oh, I was for that.' That's how that works.'
He also pointed to job gains that have taken hold during the past five years and a government report on Thursday showing the economy grew at an annualized rate of 3.5 percent in the third quarter.
'If you care about these policies, you've got to keep pushing for them,' Mr. Obama said.
It was an economic message in stark contrast to the president's surroundings - a state whose unemployment rate is among the nation's highest, where Gina Raimondo, the Democrat running for governor, speaks often of how the state has been left behind the rest of the nation's recovery.
'We really are in a jobs crisis,' Ms. Raimondo said in a brief interview before Mr. Obama's speech, noting that Rhode Island 's unemployment rate is 7.6 percent, much higher than the 5.9 percent national average. In Providence, the state capital where the president appeared, the rate is 10 percent. 'My whole campaign is just pounding that message,' she said.
Of the economic rebound Mr. Obama so often mentions, Ms. Raimondo said, 'We just haven't felt it here.'
The speech came in the middle of a five-state campaign tour Mr. Obama has been making to boost Democratic candidates for governor, with stops planned for Saturday in Detroit and on Sunday in Bridgeport, Conn., and Philadelphia. In the races' final days, the president is staying out of the most important battleground states, although he is tracking the races from afar.
Posted by Unknown on Friday, October 31, 2014 - Rating: 4.5
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