Obama to take in Detroit auto show as industry flourishes

“If I was a parent up there I would be beside myself that my kids’ health would be at risk”, said Obama during a stop in nearby Detroit. I ran for president to do what needed to be done.’ And I placed my bet on you. Americans purchased almost 17.5 million vehicles past year.

“What’s true of Detroit is true of the country”, he said.

Snyder, who appointed the emergency managers responsible for changing the source of Flint’s drinking water, waited more than a week after a state of public emergency had been declared in October 2015 to acknowledge that mistakes had been made.

“I’m glad the state is putting in resources and we welcome the Michigan National Guard with open arms”, Flint Mayor Karen Weaver said in a statement.

On Saturday, President Barack Obama signed an emergency declaration for Flint.

Flint’s water supply was contaminated following a 2014 switch off of Detroit’s water system and onto the Flint River.

A Ford Motor Co plant in MI that Obama visited in January 2015 is ending production of small cars in 2018, the company announced in July, and is expected to start building SUVs to help meet soaring demand.

The president spent almost an hour at the auto show, looking at crash avoidance technology from ZF TRW and sitting in a 2017 Chevy Bolt EV, an all-electric vehicle that will be available late this year.

Flint, the birthplace of General Motors that once employed 80,000 autoworkers, but which now faces widespread poverty after auto jobs largely left the city, has been reeling from the discovery that its water contains dangerously high levels of lead.

This week, the Democratic Obama administration tapped a Health and Human Services official to lead the federal recovery effort in Flint, joining officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other federal departments in the city.

And he praised the strength of the economic recovery, saying the country has 14 million new jobs since the recession, “the longest streak of job creation in USA history”.

“We are going to have [the mayor’s] back and all the people of Flint’s back as they go all the way through this awful tragedy”, Obama said in a speech to Detroit autoworkers.

By classing it as such, on the same level as natural disasters, the city would be able to get much more federal aid.

Even three years later, a slight majority said they disapproved of the bailout, with Republicans opposing it by a 3-to-1 margin, Gallup said.