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Obama pushes jobs plan at LinkedIn town hall

By Aamer Madhani, USA TODAY
Updated

President Obama plugged his jobs recovery package in a town hall meeting at the headquarters of the social media company LinkedIn today. Here's The Oval's live blog of Obama's exchange with LinkedIn's audience.

2:59 p.m.: President Obama spends a few minutes shaking hands with audience members as he wraps up the LinkedIn town hall meeting. Read tomorrow's USA TODAY for more coverage from Jon Swartz, our man on the scene.

2:55 p.m.: President Obama wraps up the town hall by calling on the audience to call on members of Congress to act in the American people's interests and put politics aside. "If we don't prepare our people with the skills they need, we're going to have problems," Obama says. "If we don't get our fiscal house in order in a way that's fair and equitable ... we're going to have problems."

2:48 p.m.:  Last question comes from an unemployed IT worker, who was laid off after 22 years in IT. He asks the president what encouragement he would have for laid-off workers. "The main message I have for you is that the problem is not you," Obama says. "It's the economy as a whole." Obama goes on to note that economic malaise is worldwide, and he reassures the worker that because he is skilled, he will be in a good place once the economy rebounds.

2:43 p.m.: A LinkedIn employee asks whether the U.S. public education system is a factor in the high unemployment rate. "When we were at our peak, it was in large part because we were doing a better job than anyone else in the world in training our workers. The rest of the world is catching up," Obama says. He laments that the rates of U.S. high school and college graduates aren't going up as China and India make huge gains.

2:33 p.m.: Obama gets a question from a bespectacled man who describes himself as "unemployed by choice." The man says he did quite well for himself working for an Internet startup. "Mr. President, will you raise my taxes?" The questioner, by the way, describes the startup as a "search engine." Wonder if he worked for Bing.

2: 25 p.m.: A recently unemployed IT analyst from Chicago asks the president what job training and education programs would be most useful to make herself employable in the future. "The one thing we can do is to make it easier for you to go back to school if you think there are skill sets that you need," Obama replies. Obama notes one aspect of his jobs plan prohibits discriminating against the long-term unemployed.

2:16 p.m.: Obama hears from a young woman who relays a question on behalf of her mother, an unemployed food service worker from Ohio who wants to know if Medicare and Social Security will be there for her. "You can tell your mom Medicare and Social Security will be there for her. Guaranteed," Obama said. He says, "Medicare is a bigger issue. Health care costs are going up too fast."

2:05 p.m.: President Obama gets a warm welcome as the folks at LinkedIn start the town hall a few minutes ahead of schedule. In his opening remarks, Obama gives a plug for his Jobs Act. He has lots of nice things to say about Silicon Valley and the region's culture of entrepreneurship and innovation. "It's that driving spirit that has made America a superpower," Obama says.

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