Obama demands backing for jobs plan
President Barack Obama told blacks to stop crying and complaining and “put on your marching shoes” to follow him into battle for jobs and opportunity.
And though he did not say it directly, he sought their support for a second term, too.
Mr Obama’s speech to the annual awards dinner of the Congressional Black Caucus was his answer to increasingly vocal griping from black leaders that he has been giving away too much in talks with Republicans – and not doing enough to fight black unemployment, which is nearly double the national average at 16.7%.
“It gets folks discouraged. I know. I listen to some of y’all,” Mr Obama told an audience of some 3,000 in a Washington convention centre.
But he said blacks need to have faith in the future – and understand that the fight will not be won if they do not rally to his side.
“I need your help,” Mr Obama said.
The president will need black turnout to match its historic 2008 levels if he is to have a shot at winning a second term, and the speech was a chance to speak directly to inner-city concerns.
He acknowledged blacks have suffered mightily because of the recession, and are frustrated that the downturn is taking so long to reverse.
“So many people are still hurting. So many people are barely hanging on,” he said, then added: “And so many people in this city are fighting us every step of the way.”
But Mr Obama said blacks know all too well from the civil rights struggle that the fight for what is right is never easy.
“Take off your bedroom slippers. Put on your marching shoes,” he said, his voice rising as applause and cheers mounted. “Shake it off. Stop complainin’. Stop grumblin’. Stop cryin’. We are going to press on. We have work to do.”
Topping the to-do list, he said, is getting Congress to the pass jobs bill he sent to Congress two weeks ago.
Mr Obama said the package of payroll tax cuts, business tax breaks and infrastructure spending will benefit 100,000 black-owned businesses and 20 million African-American workers.
Republicans have indicated they are open to some of the tax measures – but oppose his means of paying for it: hiking taxes on top income-earners and big business.
Caucus leaders remain fiercely protective of the first African-American president, but in recent weeks they have been increasingly vocal in their discontent – especially over black joblessness.
“If Bill Clinton had been in the White House and had failed to address this problem, we probably would be marching on the White House,” the caucus chairman, Representative Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri, recently told McClatchy Newspapers.
Like many Democratic lawmakers, caucus members were dismayed by Mr Obama’s concessions to the Republicans during the summer’s talks on raising the government’s borrowing limit.
Mr Cleaver called the compromise deal a “sugar-coated Satan sandwich”.
