President Obama made a campaign stop in Jacksonville during our Moms Matter Road Trip through Florida and we re-routed our plans in order to be there. The president roused a crowd of 3,000 supporters with a message tailored specifically to address the needs and concerns of middle class America.
Whether you live in Florida or elsewhere in the country, watching his stump speech gives you a good idea of Obama's plans if he remains president for the next four years.
Click through to see our Moms Matter video containing highlights from the speech.
The audience included many parents, who'd brought their children with them to hear the President speak.
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While critics say Mr. Obama hasn't done enough as president over the last four years, he blamed Congress for refusing to compromise and creating a number of stalemates in Washington.
President Obama also pledged to raise taxes on people making more than $250,000 per year -- a bone of contention with some small business owners, who say it's unfair for their taxes to increase when they're using their higher incomes to create jobs and pay workers.
The president talked about his plans to improve life for America's middle class through education, mortgage refinancing, and his biggest accomplishment to date -- the Affordable Healthcare Act.
His charisma is undeniable and the crowd responded enthusiastically, responding aloud to much of what he had to say.
Tomorrow, we'll show you reaction to Obama's appearance, both from supporters and critics. In the meantime, what do you think of the president's campaign speech?
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Comments 49
Re-negotiate to lower gas prices, or put money into making more affordable hybrid vehicles. Refinancing? PLEASE! There are so many restrictions on his refinancing plan, that people who need it most, can't even use it. I know, because I tried to refinance through his new little set-up. There are so many hoops & red tape that I doubt Houdini could get through it.
Insurance. Pft. It may help the poor, but it certainly doesn't help the middle class. Only people with lesser income qualify for medi-cal or other low-cost insurance. Nothing has been done to make Kaiser more affordable. Or to make companies stop charging "blanket" prices. If they did medical insurance like they do auto insurance, I wouldn't be uninsured. I'm the only one in my entire family who is uninsured, because as an unmarried SAHM I have no employer to buy through, and my SO can't put me on his unless we got married. *sorry, insurance isn't a good reason to be married* to buy from Kaiser or any other plan that has affordable co-pays, I have to pay 400-600$ a MONTH!! That's 1/4 of our monthly income, just on insurance for ME alone.
Yah, Obama hasn't done shit for the middle class.
Raising taxes on people who "make" $250,000 a year is what started this crap for all of us small business owners in the first place. On paper we make that but we bring home much less than half of that. We were taxed on our inventory and our operating costs. Banks quit loaning money. The stock market tanked. We've had one thing or the other happen to us "middle class" that we can't take anymore. We've gone from 90 employees to 34. Let's not even talk about how our "new health-care" plan has worked out for our employees. We pay twice as much and get less coverage than ever.
This man had "PLANS" during his last campain too and what's he done? Blaming congress now and not Bush? Please. He told us if he couldn't "hope and change" things, he promised he'd be a one term president. What happened to that promise? Things are NOT better.
He has NO idea what any of us are going through. Romney might not be the right answer either but at least he's run business's and knows how to do that. Right now I feel he's the lesser of two evils. Isn't it sad we should have to vote this way? But that's the most important thing right now. Getting people working. Getting our economy back. After that, everything else will fall into place but that's the number one thing we need right now and Obama had his chance. He failed.
FAILED.
Can you name some issues in the past four years where the democrats in general, and OWEbama specifically were willing to compromise with the Republicans in any way? It has consistently been the democrats get 100% of what they want or nothing.
BTW, for you lefties, I understand you may be confused by the propaganda fog, but you do realize that the Bush tax rates place the overall distribution of the tax burden more heavily on upper income levels than they were under Clinton, don't you? The FACT is that if you eliminated the "Bush tax cuts" in their entirety, the lower income segments of the population would be shouldering MORE of the tax burden?
Same old Same old. Do nothing president.
Too bad all he can do is talk pretty.
This sums it up nicely:
Why didn't he do any of all that "good stuff" in his first term, when he had a democrat super-majority in congress, and any and all democrat legislation was steamrolled right on through with the other party unable to oppose.
Over the past 4 years, the president has lost the respect of the middle class, teachers, the gay community and so many more. Even his own team in Congress doesn't support his ideas, so how can anything ever get accomplished. As for the healthcare act, I work and have wonderful benefits. However, thanks to this plan, it may be better for our company to stop assisting with benefits and pay the penalty for not providing insurance. this is the same for millions of other workers. We may lose our benefits in order to appease the fairness gods.
That's the same as my house payment. I pay 1,112.08 a month for home, property tax, & owners insurance.
So if I got insured, that would be 2/3 of our entire monthly income GONE on house, and medical. Again I say, w.t.f. does this MORON think he's doing for the middle class?