Gov. Rick Snyder has also sought to highlight Michigan’s economic turnaround by focusing on boosting skilled trades, apprenticeships, and community colleges. He called MCC one of the best and most innovative community colleges in the country.. Its an idea whose time has come, Obama told the supportive and friendly crowd.
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House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Wednesday that there was “widespread support” among House Republicans to approve a stopgap bill well into the fall to allow more time to negotiate final budget numbers with Obama.
Biden’s appearance with Obama was one of her first public appearances since the vice president has consulted with family, aides and allies about challenging Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Obama is expected to announce $175 million in grant funding for 34,000 new “earn and learn” apprenticeships in high-growth and high-tech industries over the next five years. He said he’ll create a new board meant to promote the idea of two free years of community college. His first visit to Michigan in July 2009 just months after his took office was also at Macomb Community College, where he announced the American Graduation Initiative, a proposal to invest almost $12 billion in community colleges by the year 2020.
“Companies making record profits aren’t sharing enough of those profits with the workers and that’s a problem”, Obama said.
Jill Biden, the vice president’s wife, who is an educator at Northern Virginia Community College, will join Obama and Education Secretary Arnie Duncan in Warren, Mich., on Wednesday to tout new federal investments to help students attain higher education and gain skills to enter the workforce.
“It will give students, teachers, counselors, administrators, alumni, businesses and other leaders a role in spreading the word about the value and impact that universal access to community college will have on our future”, according to a statement from the U.S. Department of Labor.
Obama also announced the creation of an independent “College Promise Advisory Board”, chaired by Dr. Jill Biden, a career educator who traveled to Michigan with the president.
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“It used to be when productivity went up in America, everybody got to share”, Biden said.
