After a week filled with controversy and criticism, President Barack Obama leaves town Friday for the second stop on his "Middle Class Jobs & Opportunity Tour." The trip, previously scheduled, takes him to Baltimore, Md., where he will press his economic agenda.
Obama, who will tour a Baltimore elementary school, a manufacturer and a community center, plans to underscore White House efforts to boost the middle class, job growth and education.
During the president's visit to Ellicot Dredges, which manufactures dredges and dredging equipment, the president will announce in public remarks a presidential memorandum to modernize and streamline the federal infrastructure permitting process, according to a White House official. The proposal is designed to build on his pledge to boost the country's manufacturing industry and invest in U.S. infrastructure.
Adding potential controversy to his trip, the owner of Ellicott Dredges, Peter Bowe, shares the view of many congressional Republicans in support of the Keystone XL oil pipeline. Bowe testified before Congress on the issue Thursday. Obama has yet to announce a position on the pipeline-- which will carry oil from Canada and the northern United States to the Gulf Coast-- but faces pressure from environmentalists and others to reject the proposal.
Controversy over the pipeline has dogged the president on other unrelated trips.
During a fundraising swing in California last month, the fact that his event was being hosted by pipeline opponent Tom Steyer, hedge fund billionaire and environmentalist, drew pipeline protesters who sought to draw attention to the issue.
For the rest of Obama's visit, he will be occupied by a visit to a Baltimore school, which will be linked to the president's proposal to create universal pre-kindergarten which was outlined in his State of the Union address, and his community center visit will be tied to his Promise Zone budget proposal to identify and assist hard-hit communities, according to the White House.
Last week, on the tour's first stop, the president made a trip to Texas to announce manufacturing competitions.
As the president left town Friday, the House Ways and Means Committee on Capitol Hill grilled the ousted acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, Steven Miller, over recent revelations that the IRS targeted conservatives applying for tax-exempt status. After the allegations were confirmed Wednesday by the Treasury Department inspector general's report, Obama announced that Miller had been forced to resign.
That action came amid continued pressure on the administration to explain revisions made to talking points related to the 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya?to which the White House responded Wednesday by releasing those emails to the media?and controversy surrounding the Department of Justice's secret seizure of Associated Press reporters' and editors' phone records in the investigation of a national security leak.
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