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Jousting Over Jobs
By: Joelle Farrell, Kathy Boccella & Robert Moran, Staff Writers Philadelphia Inquirer
Losses rise again; candidates press call for change.
September 6, 2008
DURYEA, PA. - Appearing before Pennsylvania voters again, Sen. Barack Obama and his running mate yesterday blamed the Bush administration for the sluggish economy and criticized the Republican Party for not addressing the issue in greater detail at its convention.
"You would think that George Bush and his potential Republican successor, John McCain, would be spending a lot of time worried about the economy and all these jobs that are being lost on their watch," Obama said.
"But if you watched the Republican National Convention over the last three days, you wouldn't know that we have the highest unemployment rate in five years, because they didn't say a thing about what's going on with the middle class."
"We've lost another 80,000 jobs," Obama said, citing a federal employment report released yesterday. "We've now lost 605,000 jobs since the beginning of this year."
The Illinois Democrat finished a two-day campaign swing through eastern Pennsylvania yesterday at a glass-manufacturing plant in Duryea, a borough of about 5,000 between Wilkes-Barre and Scranton.
Obama's running mate, Delaware Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., continued efforts to tie McCain to the Bush administration. Biden spoke at Ironworkers Local Union 401 in Northeast Philadelphia and later at the Maple Point Middle School in Langhorne.
"John and George Bush are joined at the hip, and we need a hip replacement," Biden said.
Alex Conant, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, responded: "Apparently Barack Obama was not listening when John McCain and Sarah Palin offered their plans to keep taxes low and create new jobs. On the other hand, Barack Obama's economic policies would only raise taxes and eliminate jobs."
Obama said in Duryea that he would offer a tax break to middle- and working-class families, which would provide relief to 95 percent of the population. He also plans to invest $15 billion each year in alternative energy over the next decade.
Obama said he wanted to revitalize manufacturing by investing in cleaner, alternative energy. He would offer tax credits for cleaner-energy companies that keep jobs in the United States, rather than outsourcing them for cheaper labor overseas.
"We can create five million jobs in solar, wind, biodiesel, hydro, geothermal," he said. "All those jobs are well-paying jobs and they can't be outsourced."
Both Obama and McCain have been campaigning heavily in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan. They are seeking the support of workers in places such as Duryea, where the loss of jobs has hit residents hard and where Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has been popular.
Tom Sweeney, 46, of Jermyn, Lackawanna County, said he was laid off two years ago after working 25 years at a local CD and DVD factory. Sweeney got a job at the glass factory that Obama visited yesterday, at lower pay.
"I want to be where I was eight years ago," he said.
Sweeney said he supported Clinton in the primary but planned to vote for Obama in November.
Other Democratic voters interviewed in Duryea yesterday weren't as sure, and some said the addition of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to the Republican ticket had charged up otherwise deflated Clinton supporters.
"Once they saw Sarah, they said I'm switching right over," Janet Russo, 48, said of some fellow Clinton supporters.
"She's very strong and I think she speaks what she believes," said Russo, who co-owns My Sister's Kitchen, a small Duryea restaurant. "I was a Hillary person and now I'm undecided."
Russo likes McCain's idea for school vouchers, but she still wants to know more about what both parties intend to do about the economy and energy policy.
Those listening to Biden yesterday were told that his GOP opponents were out of touch with middle-class economic fears.
"The silence of the Republican Party [at the convention] was deafening on jobs, on health care, on the economy, on all the things that matter to people," Biden said in Langhorne.
Biden and his wife, Jill, a college professor, described the Democratic ticket as sympathetic to middle-class concerns about the economy, saying they understood that people were struggling to pay for food, gas, heat and college tuition.
"I don't have to tell you about shrinking wages," he said.
When one of the several hundred invited guests at the Ironworkers' hall asked Biden whether he would "take off the kid gloves" when talking about Palin, he recalled a campaign story about Harry S. Truman.
When a supporter shouted "Harry! Give 'em hell!" Biden said, Truman replied: "I'm not going to give them hell. I'm just going to tell them the truth. They're going to think it's hell."
Biden again praised McCain, a longtime friend, for the bravery he showed while being held as a POW, but he said that wasn't enough of a qualification for the presidency.
"America needs more than a great soldier," Biden said. "America needs a wise leader."
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