Buffalo billboard petitions president for “a freakin’ job”

“I need a freakin’ job.” That’s the message President Obama saw as he arrived in Buffalo, N.Y.,  this afternoon for an event talking up the administration’s success in creating new jobs. He also pitched Congress on approving a $30 billion credit for small-business growth.

Yet critics say Obama has been focusing his recovery efforts too narrowly and hasn’t done enough to help people find work. After all, the latest job figures show 9.9 percent of the country still out of work. That inspired a group of unemployed Buffalo residents — who also have a website called INAFJ.org — to appeal to the president in the form of a billboard along the route his motorcade took into town. Here is a photo of the billboard:

The group has also produced a video, which can be viewed here:

Yet jobs aren’t a huge priority for either party heading into the midterm campaigns, as Politics Daily’s Jill Lawrence notes. That might be because other issues have taken precedence. A new Gallup poll finds that for the first time in two months, the issue of “jobs” has fallen to No. 2 on the list of issues Americans are most concerned about. The new No. 1 issue: The economy in general. White House officials defend their efforts on jobs, saying the president has been focused as much on creating new jobs as on “saving” current positions.

[Lost jobs that won’t come back]

But here’s a sign the job seekers’ message to the administration may be getting through: The White House just announced Obama will travel next Tuesday to Youngstown, Ohio — where unemployment hit 15.1 percent last month, the city’s highest jobless rate in more than 15 years. The focus of Obama’s visit: “jobs and the economy,” according to the White House.

And a more direct sign still: Obama press aide Bill Burton was asked about the billboard in today’s press gaggle. His reply was, “The President is here to talk about jobs, what his administration has done to create jobs, what we need to do in order to create an environment where small businesses can create jobs. So the answer is, we’re on the path to creating more jobs, and we’ve got a lot more work to do.”

—Holly Bailey is the senior politics writer for Yahoo! News.

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