The US President, Mr Barack Obama, will this week push hold-out senators to stop blocking his jobs bill, the White House said ahead of a three-day bus tour through states key to his 2012 re-election bid.
Mr Obama’s tour comes as Republicans and several moderate Democrats remain roadblocks to passing his $447-billion jobs plan in the Senate.
His armoured bus will spend three days cruising Virginia and North Carolina — traditionally southern, conservative territory, but states that he nudged into the Democratic column in his 2008 White House triumph.
At colleges, training centres, a fire station and a military base, Mr Obama is set to deliver speeches championing his efforts to boost the US economy and tamp down the stagnant 9.1 per cent unemployment, and slamming lawmakers who he says stand in the way of fixing it.
“In the public events that are scheduled for each day, the president will challenge Congress to get to work this week passing every element of the American Jobs Act, piece by piece,” Deputy White House press secretary, Mr John Earnest, told reporters in a conference call yesterday.
Senior White House officials have said they would work with Democrats in Congress to schedule the votes on parts of the bill, including an extension of payroll tax cuts and financing to keep public employees like teachers in work.
They hope to force Republicans into tough votes that will see the party’s lawmakers facing the prospect of voting against extending payroll taxes, tax hikes for the rich and money to help war veterans find work.
Part of their plan, said Mr Earnest, is to urge lawmakers to get behind a $35-billion proposal in the bill that would assist states and local communities to support “nearly 400,000 educators jobs nationwide, in addition to first responders, such as policemen and firefighters.”
Mr Obama will begin his tour today in Asheville, North Carolina — a city of 800,000 people at the foot of the Appalachian mountains, and a town where he has vacationed with his family.