Stymied by Congress, Obama turns to nation’s mayors

WASHINGTON — With thoroughfare of his State of a Union bulletin doubtful in a Republican-controlled Congress, President Obama called on a nation’s mostly Democratic big-city mayors to adopt what he calls “middle category economics.”

“We take a partnership with we seriously, since you’re mostly a place where change happens fastest,” Obama told some-more than 200 mayors during a White House Friday.

Obama remarkable that cities and counties are already lifting their smallest wages, extenuation paid leave policies and addressing homelessness “without watchful for Congress.”

“So that’s what mayors do. They get things done. They make things happen. And on other obligatory issues like responding to meridian change or removing some-more families insured, rebuilding infrastructure, creation certain that a youngest Americans get a best start in life with peculiarity pre-K — mayors like we are assisting to get it done. And we wish to help,” Obama said.

He told a mayors that they’re a pivotal partial of his plan for what he’s called a “fourth quarter” of his presidency.

“The boss gets it,” pronounced Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, a Democrat. “He gave us some good marching orders of ways that we can be useful — as he put it, in a fourth entertain — to get things finished for American families.”

St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman pronounced movement during a state and internal turn might have a bottom-up effect, spurring Congress to do a same. St. Paul only adopted a paid leave process for a 2,700 city employees, giving 4 weeks to birth relatives and dual weeks to other parents.

“I’ll be blunt about this. The Republicans are in assign of both houses of Congress now. They can’t censure a Democrats for not removing a check passed,” pronounced Coleman, a Democrat. “The politics of that might assistance us to get past some of a gridlock.”

Since giving his State of a Union Address to Congress on Tuesday, Obama has promoted his bulletin to infrequently radical venues: to colleges in Idaho and Kansas, to Internet celebrities in YouTube interviews, and on Friday to mayors.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors wrapped adult a week-long winter assembly in Washington Friday after assembly with Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, 8 cupboard secretaries and other high-level administration officials. After 10 mins of open remarks to a mayors, Obama kicked reporters out of a East Room of a White House and talked to mayors for another 30 minutes.

Republican mayors pronounced they found some common belligerent with a president.

“Overall, we consider a boss is to be praised for assembly with internal officials and listening to a needs,” pronounced Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett. He pronounced he found common belligerent with a boss on infrastructure appropriation and on permitting internal governments to collect sales taxes on out-of-state Internet purchases.

And Albuquerque Mayor Richard Berry, who leads a 325-member congress of Republican mayors, pronounced he disagrees with a boss on some issues though concluded that cities are good laboratories for mercantile policies that emanate good-paying jobs.

“Local supervision is positively some-more flexible and nimble than a sovereign government,” he said. “It’s harder to categorize mayors, and there’s something people in Washington can learn from that attitude.”

Follow @gregorykorte

Article source: http://rssfeeds.usatoday.com/~/83968277/0/usatodaycomwashington-topstories~Stymied-by-Congress-Obama-turns-to-nations-mayors/