Obama talks infrastructure and jobs to Building Trades unions

(White House) A relaxed and confident President Obama spoke to the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department's legislative conference Monday morning, diverging substantially from his planned remarks to add jokes and swats at Republican leaders. A large part of the speech was framed around how Republican refusal to invest is causing America to fall behind:

But here's the thing'as a share of the economy, Europe invests more than twice what we do in infrastructure; China about four times as much. Are we going to sit back and let other countries build the newest airports and the fastest railroads and the most modern schools, at a time when we've got private construction companies all over the world'or all over the country'and millions of workers who are ready and willing to do that work right here in the United States of America?

Speaking to the Building Trades unions was a perfect opportunity for the president to speak about jobs and infrastructure investment, since unemployment remains high among construction workers, and funding bridges, transit, roads, schools, and other infrastructure would create large numbers of construction jobs. It was also an opportunity for Obama to make his case to some unions that have been angry with his approach to the Keystone pipeline; though he didn't directly discuss Keystone, by turning the focus on all of the infrastructure and construction jobs bills he has proposed and Republicans have blocked, he indirectly made the case for why those unions should focus their anger elsewhere.

THE PRESIDENT: I sent them a jobs bill that would have put hundreds of thousands of construction workers back to work repairing our roads, our bridges, schools, transit systems, along with saving the jobs of cops and teachers and firefighters, creating a new tax cut for businesses. They said no.

AUDIENCE: Booo --

THE PRESIDENT: I went to the Speaker's hometown, stood under a bridge that was crumbling. Everybody acknowledges it needs to be rebuilt.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Let him drive on it! (Laughter.)

THE PRESIDENT: Maybe he doesn't drive anymore. (Laughter.) Maybe he doesn't notice how messed up it was. (Laughter.) They still said no.

There are bridges between Kentucky and Ohio where some of the key Republican leadership come from, where folks are having to do detours an extra hour, hour and a half drive every day on their commute because these bridges don't work. They still said no. So then I said, well, maybe they couldn't handle the whole bill in one big piece. Let's break it up. Maybe it's just too much for them.

So I sent them just the part of the bill that would have created these construction jobs. They said no.

Obama has long tried to move beyond partisanship (often to a fault), which means that every time he does anything partisan, Republicans and gullible members of the traditional media suggest he's being hypocritical. As he focused on Republican obstructionism before this clearly receptive audience, though, Obama repeatedly noted that infrastructure should not be and has only recently become a partisan issue, pointing to an argument that should stand him in good stead on many fronts during the campaign'his efforts to get beyond partisanship were met by an increase in partisanship from Republicans, so what was he to do? But the key message of this speech is that Obama is not only ready to fight, he's ready to enjoy it.