Obama on tour will urge end to jobs bill roadblocks

WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama will this week push hold-out senators to stop blocking his jobs bill, the White House said Sunday ahead of a three-day bus tour through states key to his 2012 reelection bid. Obama's tour comes as Republicans and several moderate Democrats remain roadblocks to passing his $447 billion jobs plan in the Senate. His armored 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 centers, a fire station and a military base, Obama is set to deliver speeches championing his efforts to boost the US economy and tamp down stagnant 9.1 percent 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 John Earnest told reporters in a conference call Sunday. Senior White House officials have said they would work with Democrats in Congress to schedule 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 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." Obama will begin his tour on Monday 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. On Tuesday, making stops along the way, he will travel to Jamestown, North Carolina, and Emporia, Virginia. On Wednesday, he will be joined by his wife Michelle in Langley, Virginia and make further rural stops. In both states, Obama will seek to reconfigure his 2008 coalition of young voters, educated middle-class voters, minorities and African-Americans for his bruising campaign to keep the White House for another four years. But his standing among white middle-class voters and independents, also important voting blocs in each state, has fallen since 2008, especially as national unemployment has stayed stubbornly high.