Obama Addresses Economic Recovery During Stop in Indiana

WAKARUSA, Ind., Aug. 5 -- President Obama arrived here Wednesday for a somewhat risky return trip to the RV capital of America, a struggling county where jobs are increasingly scarce and anger is rising.

Obama did not hold a town hall-style event here -- his format of choice -- but instead delivered a relatively short speech appraising the economic recovery and highlighting research grants that he believes will help begin changing the American auto industry.

There were no questions from the audience of manufacturing employees, which greeted the announcement of a $39 million federal stimulus grant for battery technology with applause.

"I believe our ability to . . . prosper as a nation depends on what happens to communities just like this one," Obama told the several hundred employees gathered inside the Elkhart County plant for the company Navistar, which will receive the grant.

"The battle for America's future will be fought and won in places like Elkhart," Obama said, listing more than half a dozen other industrial cities that he said were once "the backbone" of the American economy.

During his February visit to the area, Obama used a town hall forum to sell the public on what eventually became a $787 billion stimulus plan, which he said had worked to slow the nation's steep economic decline. A report released last week showed the gross domestic product shrinking 1 percent over the past quarter, less than some economists expected.

But as a bookend to that visit, this brief trip to the Navistar plant, which makes recreation vehicles, armored vehicles for the military and electric trucks, holds a measure of risk for the White House.

The unemployment rate in Elkhart County is roughly 16 percent, a sharp jump since Obama first visited it in May 2008. A year ago the unemployment rate was 6 percent.

Many here are angry and uncertain. Along the roads of the downtown here, people waved American flags and took pictures. Some held up signs, including ones saying, "Stop Socialism."

"We spend a lot of time in places where the economy is bad because there are many places where the economy is bad," Robert Gibbs, Obama's press secretary, told reporters aboard Air Force One.

"The president will tell this community, as he's told many others . . . it took us a while to get here . . . and it's going to take some time to dig our way out."

Obama and his senior advisers have been forced to defend the administration's economic stewardship from Republican criticism that it has been misguided and overly reliant on public spending.