US jobs will not go to India: Obama

United States president Barack Obama said on Monday that America had returned to robust competitiveness and the danger of jobs and industries fleeing to countries like China, India or Germany was over.

“When I took office, we put in place a new economic plan that rewards hard work instead of greed; a plan that rewards responsibility instead of reckless; a plan that focused on middle class, (and) making them more secure,” Obama said at a Democratic fundraiser in Austin, Texas.

The president said the US “was competitive over the long run so the jobs and industries of the future weren’t going to China or India or Germany, but were going to the United States of America, right here.”

Gradually entering into an election mode with the mid-term elections less than three months away, the president has been frequently, in public speeches, claiming how his policies are aimed towards stopping outsourcing of jobs and manufacturing.

Instead of spending money on special interest tax loopholes that don’t create American jobs, “we said we’re going to make smart investments in education and innovation and clean energy that will benefit all people and our entire economy,” he said.

“Instead of giving special interests a free reign to write their own regulations, we demanded new accountability from Washington to Wall Street so that big corporations had to play by the same rules as small companies and by individuals. That’s only fair,” Obama said.

Observing that it took nearly a decade to enter the current phase of the economic mess he inherited, Obama said it’s going to take some more time to “dig our way out” of that hole.

“The devastation that has touched so many of our families, so many of our communities, that is going to take some time to heal. And I hear those stories firsthand wherever I travel. I hear about them in the letters that I receive every night that I read from people who are doing their best to keep on striving towards that American Dream, but keep on hitting a bunch of road blocks and are looking for help. So the road to recovery is long and it’s filled with challenges. And I’m under no illusion that we’ve gotten there yet. We’ve got a lot more work to do,” he said.

Continuing with his criticism of Republican policies, Obama said: “We’ve got a choice between a forward-looking agenda that is rebuilding the structure of this economy so it’s working for all Americans, or just going back to the same stuff that got us into this mess.”