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Posted: February 13, 2008 3:42 PM
Potomac Primary Victor Obama Outlines His Ideas on Economy
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Following new delegate gains in Washington, D.C, Virginia and Maryland primaries Tuesday, Sen. Barack Obama spoke to audiences in Wisconsin Wednesday to address the struggling U.S. economy and his plans for resuscitation.

The Illinois senator blamed current Washington leaders — including Democratic rival Sen. Hillary Clinton and Republican front-runner Sen. John McCain — for the country’s unstable economy.

“We are not standing on the brink of recession due to forces beyond our control,” Obama said, according to the New York Times. “The fallout from the housing crisis that’s cost jobs and wiped out savings was not an inevitable part of the business cycle, it was a failure of leadership and imagination in Washington.”

The senator specifically targeted the war in Iraq as the key drain on the U.S. economy and added that both of his White House rivals have supported the war at some point.

” … Politicians like John McCain and Hillary Clinton voted for a war in Iraq that should’ve never been authorized and never been waged — a war that is costing us thousands of precious lives and billions of dollars a week,” he said.

Obama also attacked Clinton indirectly by criticizing her husband’s economic policy and trade deals between within North America and between the United States and China, and claimed these deals only, “shielded U.S. corporations, and not American workers,” the Agence France-Presse reported.

The senator spoke from a General Motors plant in Janesville, Wisc., a day after the company announced a record $38 billion quarterly loss. He proposed the creation of a “National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank,” which would invest $60 billion over 10 years and would create nearly 2 million new jobs in the construction field, as reported in the Times. “He said the program would be paid for by ending the Iraq war. He also renewed his call to create an every plan to invest $150 billion over 10 years to establish a ‘green energy sector’ to add up to 5 million jobs in the next two decades.”

Obama is looking to build on momentum from his 8-contest winning streak since the Super Tuesday races with successful turnouts in Wisconsin and Hawaii contests on Feb. 19.

Obama did cross paths with some detractors amid his Wisconsin campaign trip. The Chicago Sun Times reports that a group of Clinton supporters outside the GM plant picketed with signs that read “debate” — a reference to new Clinton campaign ads in the state criticizing Obama for not agreeing to a debate for the Wisconsin vote.

“Outside the plant, Obama passed Clinton supporters holding up “debate” signs. Clinton is running a commercial blasting Obama for refusing to agree to a debate in Milwaukee, in addition to the two already scheduled in Ohio and Texas,” Chicago Sun Times reporter Abdon M. Pallasch wrote.

“We’ve already had 18 debates,” Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod told the paper in Janesville. “We’re going to be meeting with the people of Wisconsin, taking their questions at town hall meetings.”