In Ohio, Obama Pushes Jobs Plan and Health Care

At a townhall-style event outside Cleveland, Ohio, Friday, President Barack Obama admitted that his agenda, including the health care reform effort, had hit “a little bit of a buzz saw,” but he vowed to keep pushing for a health care bill to pass Congress and to continue efforts focused on job growth.

“I am not going to walk away just because it’s hard. We’re going to keep on working to get this done with Democrats, Republicans, anyone who is willing to step up. Because I am not going to watch more people get crushed by costs or denied the care they need by insurance company bureaucrats or partisan politics or special-interest power in Washington.”

Mr. Obama spoke in Elyria, a community hard hit by the loss of manufacturing jobs. Statewide, Ohio suffers from 10.9 unemployment, higher than the national average, and in a column in the Cleveland Plain Dealer today, House Minority Leader John Boehner (Rep.-Ohio) criticized the president’s stimulus package as failing to bring jobs to the state.

In response, the president said that he had taken office “in the middle of a raging economic storm” and that he intends to push Congress during his State of the Union speech on Wednesday to pass a new jobs bill.

“I’m calling on Congress to pass a jobs bill to put more Americans to work rebuilding roads and railways, to provide tax breaks to small businesses for hiring people, and to offer families an incentive to make their homes energy efficient, saving them money while creating jobs,” Mr. Obama said Friday.