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UPDATE 2-Obama: US can't afford two years of gridlock
* Obama sounds conciliatory note
* President faces Republican threat to stall his agenda
(Adds quotes and details)
By Matt Spetalnick
WASHINGTON, Nov 5 (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama, still smarting from his Democrats' big losses in congressional elections, said on Friday the United States cannot afford to get mired in legislative gridlock for the next two years while countries like China forge ahead.
Three days after voters punished Obama's party for the weak economy, he called for "putting politics aside" as he struck a conciliatory tone with victorious Republicans, saying he was open to hearing their ideas for tackling stubbornly high unemployment.
Obama now faces a threat by Republican leaders to try to roll back his signature policies, including a healthcare overhaul and Wall Street reform, and to block his agenda for the rest of his term.
"We can't spend the next two years mired in gridlock. Other countries like China aren't standing still so we can't stand still either. We've got to move forward," Obama told reporters before departing on a 10-day Asia tour. [ID:nN04236677]
Voters unhappy with the sluggish economy delivered a stinging rebuke to Obama and his Democrats in Tuesday's congressional elections, handing Republicans control of the House of Representatives and trimming the Democratic majority in the Senate.
Obama spoke after the government reported a bigger-than-expected increase in employment in October but not enough to budge the 9.6 percent jobless rate.
He called the latest unemployment figures "encouraging news" but said there was still much more work to be done to boost jobs, and he urged Republicans to work with him. But he gave no sign of ceding ground on any specific issues.
"I am open to any idea, any proposal, any way we can get the economy growing faster so that people who need work can find it faster," Obama said.
OBAMA PUSHES PROPOSALS
Obama pushed for progress on several of his proposals that have faced resistance from Republicans, including tax breaks to encourage businesses to purchase new equipment and to invest in research and development and extending unemployment benefits.
He also repeated his call for making permanent the middle-class tax cuts. The White House signaled on Thursday it was willing to negotiate with Republicans on extending expiring Bush-era tax cuts but Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell took a hard line against compromises with Obama.
Obama has invited top leaders from both parties to a meeting and a dinner at the White House on Nov. 18.
Turning to his Asia trip, Obama said: "I'm looking very much forward to helping to pry some markets open, help American businesses, and put people back to work here at home during the course of this trip."
He has set a goal of doubling U.S. exports in the next five years.
"This is a reminder as well that the most important competition that we face ... will not be Democrats and Republicans," he said, citing foreign competition.
"Our future depends on putting politics aside to solve problems, to worry about the next generation instead of the next election." (Additional reporting by Caren Bohan and Ross Colvin; Editing by Vicki Allen and Bill Trott)
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After listening to Billionaire Donald Trump describing the economic mess our country has been experience for years. The man has been demonized by the press and certain critics, but he doesn’t have to kowtow to anybody? He is a self made entrepreneur’s and has made several comments of joining the political cesspit in Washington, even confirming his intent of running for President. My personal opinion on that idea is that his business experience would be a protracted way of solving these United States fiscal problems. From his words, he is a very patriotic American and sees that the route we are taking now is into deeper financial mess. I thought as a Tea Party associate that his point of view makes perfect sense of how to extract ourselves from this unemployment quicksand? Trump opened up his broadcast saying,
“We don’t need to tell you unemployment in this country is at a nightmare level, still 9.6 percent, and that doesn’t even include those who are so beaten down to have given up. What can we do? What would Donald Trump do? So how do we get jobs? Trump opened up talking about unemployment in Iowa and how “Maytag” a company famous for home appliances skipped off to Mexico. The joke on us, that there is no custom tariffs when the products, return to America? The Irony is their commodities from Mexico is really not that much cheaper? Trump added that we don’t manufacturer products anymore. My example being Television manufacturing Company in Bloomington, Indiana that closed down the plant in July 1995, so hundreds of people lost their jobs, to Mexico.
This was the inception of the Free Trade obsession, which has developed into a sad joke in itself, on the US worker. Doesn’t every loyal American realize that we are the largest consumer nation in the world? That we should demand balanced trade agreements, not the insidious treaties we have now? If the Tea Party Senators Jim DeMint, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio are listening we need to immediately renegotiate our trade agreements with every country involved, because they are laughing behind our backs. From what planet did these trade ambassador morons in our nations Department of Commerce hail from, a lunatic asylum for brain dead zombies? The imports from China are so bad; I refuse to buy them anymore. Trump goes on to say, “we make hardly anything anymore, importing things like glass, curtains So much product is made in China.
Donald, stated,” We are rebuilding China. Our economy is just getting killed. And you look at China it is going through the roof. A friend of mine went to a pretty much new city in China. They said unbelievable the airport and everything else. They come back to LaGuardia. They said it is like coming into a third world country. It is horrible what has happened. So somebody is going to get smart. They talk about the economy, incentives. We are losing our jobs to other countries. You are not going to solve unemployment unless something very, very stringent is done with regard to China and other countries.” Greta Van Sustern replied, so what do we do to get jobs? ” I would tax Chinese products. People say that’s not free trade. What is free trade when they have billions and billions of dollars of surplus over us? So we don’t want free trade with people that are ripping us.
He went on to say,” But they manipulated their currency so it is hard to compete with Chinese dollars, cost. What happens is the dollar versus Chinese currency is not competitive.” What I would do is I would tax like 25 percent tax. You want to buy from China, that’s great. But you are paying 25 percent tax. If you buy it in this country you don’t have that tax. By the way, you know what is going happen? People are going to start creating jobs in this country because they are not going to pay that tax. Trump Concluded, “People tell me, Donald, that’s not free trade. We don’t have free trade right now. We have a country, China in particular, that is ripping us like nobody’s ripped us before. And we are rebuilding China. Our country is so big in terms of what we buy that we are rebuilding China. And in 10 years to 12 years China will have a bigger economy than us which was unthinkable five years ago.
Bloggers Unite–start writing about this so called—FREE TRADE–as we must educate the people. This is–NOT–free trade? It’s a very large money tree, to cheap Chinese importers, with huge profits. Half the stuff from cut price countries is made with poor quality material, not like the far superior those once-upon-a-time goods we manufactured here. China is building the huge military complex on our dollars they take from us? America is falling beside the wayside and no country can exist on just being a service industry. The Tea party now has a solid foundation, with a growing base of Senators and Representatives. I for one are going to contact as many as I can, to push this new lease on life against both the doldrums brought on us by morose agendas of Liberal Democrats and the RNC. This issue is probably one of the most important agendas that must be enforced.
Think about this–America is so large, we could rebuild our own country in selling products across State lines. We don’t even need foreign importation of goods? As for the discussion on jobs with Mr. Trump, I too think he would make a great president. It’s time the political parties come to some mutual arrangement and bring back jobs this country. Impose taxes on all foreign imports and on businesses that outsource jobs. Stop attracting illegal immigrants, by severing all welfare and government subsidies and placing painful prison sentences on businesses that hire them. Return our government to the people and leave states alone such as Arizona, to enforce their own policing laws such as SB1170. GOOGLE—Judicial Watch and learn about the corruption within our government, from the questionable special interest lobbyists.
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