The bus was built in Canada by Prevost,
The feds bought the two coaches for $2.2 million from Hemphill Brothers Coach, based in Tennessee. It installed custom interior upgrades into the Prevost shell, which accounted for about half the cost.
The contract lists the country of origin as Canada and place of manufacture as “outside U.S. – Trade Agreements,” a possible reference to the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Right on time for the Canada-Colombia FTA, too.
Sam Youngman of The Hill calls Obama a road warrior with an anti-Washington message. Really. Take a look,
If Obama brings his populist, anti-Washington anger back to the White House, pulling out the brass knuckles to battle with Congress, Democrats will rally around him.
Sam must have forgotten that by virtue of being POTUS for the past 2.5 years, Obama is Washington.
The question is, did the dog eat the recovery?
Once the bus tour ends, Obama goes to and returns from vacation, and returns to Washington, he’ll be giving “a major speech in early September to unveil new ideas for speeding up job growth“. This carries the sound of approaching thunder: the storm will be most likely a QE3. Obama’s job creation “plan” was the stimulus, and QE2. The plan was huge, unprecedented federal spending – that’s the only plan.
What did that get us? Deficits!
If Obama had any other plan, he would have unveiled it on day one of the Greyhound One tour, and would have stolen the show from the Republicans entering the presidential race.
What he has mentioned so far is stale,
On the second day of Obama’s three-day bus tour of the upper Midwest, the president worked off the blueprint he had used the day before, offering proposals such as extending a payroll tax cut, spending money to repair roads and bridges, and ratifying pending trade agreements.
More not-quite-shovel-ready road repairs, trade agreements that have been blocked by his own party for the past 4 years, and extending a payroll tax cut? Been there, done that. Meanwhile, Obama’s proposed budget was rejected by his own party, and the Democrats are now taking us into the third year in a row without approving a federal budget.
Hence, he’ll blame Congress.
Richard Fernandez looks at the possible results of that gambit,
In all likelihood, the President’s decision to “blame Congress” will mean an increasing polarization in politics on which basis he will be utterly dependent. He cannot now win on a rising economy so his last chance is to invoke the struggle 24×7. It would be an ironic political fate for the man who promised to be the great uniter and world Grand Bargainer. Ultimately people’s fates are bound up with the forces they unleash and not by what they say.
The motorcade rolls on,
