Revitalizing the rural economy is the focus of President Obama's latest segment of his "White House to Main Street" tour. The two-day trip began with a stop in Eastern Iowa today and will also bring the president to Missouri and Illinois, Patricia Zangerle of Reuters reports. In advance of the trip, the White House issued a 42-page report on the rural economy, which looks at the administration's efforts to increase lending to rural small businesses, promote biofuels based on agriculture products and support rural recreation and tourism.
The three-state tour marks a visit by Obama to "areas far from the cities and coastal regions where he is most popular," Zangerle writes. Obama will also focus on his administration's efforts to "boost agricultural exports and strengthen rural infrastructure," Zangerle reports. At the final stop on the tour in Quincy, Ill., Obama will speak on Wall Street reform. (Read more)
Obama is visiting Lee, Henry and Wapello Counties in Iowa, each of which has an unemployment rate higher than the state as a whole, Thomas Beaumont of the Des Moines Register reports. The president will focus on what the stimulus act has brought rural areas, but one Iowa State University economist told Beaumont the federal government may not be able to stop the job loss those three counties have experienced. "We've seen decades of persistent population decline in a lot of these areas," Liesl Eathington said. "There's a reason for that. People tend to move to larger and larger urban centers where there are more diverse employment opportunities. It's natural to see what we're seeing in Iowa. To try to fight that can be a losing battle." (Read more)
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