Obama: Economy faces serious headwinds
President Obama spoke to roughly 1,000 people at the Honeywell International facility in Golden Valley (MPR Photo/Jennifer Simonson)
President Obama spoke to about a thousand people at a Honeywell facility in Golden Valley today. The speech came after the U.S. Labor Department released a disappointing jobs report for the month of May. The report found that only 69,000 jobs were created in May, a number well below expectations.
Obama said high gas prices and the debt crisis in Europe are a drag on the nation's economic growth.
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"Our business have created almost 4.3 million new jobs over the last 27 months but as we learned in today's jobs report we're still not creating them as fast as we want," Obama said. "And just like at this time last year, our economy is still facing some serious head winds."
Obama was in Golden Valley to pitch his plan to find more jobs for Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. He called on Congress to pass what he calls the Veterans Job Corps, which would help vets find work as police officers and firefighters and other jobs serving their communities.
"I believe that no one who fights for this country should ever have to fight for a job when they come home," Obama said.
Obama said he would take executive action to make it easier for people who got experience in the military to translate it into licenses and certification to help get manufacturing jobs.
You can listen to Obama's speech here:
Republicans argue that the president isn't doing enough to fix the economy. They say Mitt Romney's background in the private sector is better suited to improve the situation.
Meanwhile, Republican Mitt Romney was on CNBC this morning to criticize President Obama over the latest jobs report. You can read the transcript here.