No energy crisis here, unless it was the president’s.
Twenty minutes after mingling with darting, crayon-toting elementary schoolers at Hallmark Cards on Friday, President Bush was still reeling.
“I’m trying to recover from the kindergarten experience,” the president told a small audience at Hallmark. “I mean, talk about sapping a person’s energy.”
The president then turned to another sagging entity — the economy. On the morning the Labor Department reported that the nation’s businesses shed jobs in January and broke a four-year string of job growth, Bush once again called for the Senate to quickly pass the $150 billion economic stimulus package that he supports.
That legislation, he insisted, would quickly pump hundreds of dollars back into the pockets of consumers and help them remain upbeat about the economy.
The House already has passed it.
“I just appreciate the fact that the Senate is working as quickly as possible,” the president said in a brief economic update at Hallmark. “I’m just urging them to get it done.”
The quicker the Senate acts, the more quickly consumers will get checks in the mail, Bush said. That, he said, will enable the economy to “recover from this period of uncertainty.”
Bush acknowledged “troubling signs” on the economic front, though he insisted that the economy’s fundamentals remain strong. Interest rates are low, he said. So is inflation. Productivity remains high.
“There’s a sense of optimism I was pleased to hear,” Bush said about his meeting earlier in the morning with a dozen area business leaders. “People are confident about the future — at least these business owners were — and they should be.”
Another item of business Friday was attending a Parkville fundraiser in West Shore Estates for Rep. Sam Graves of Missouri. The event raised just more than $500,000 for Graves and the Missouri GOP.
The fundraiser at John and Twila Wilson’s home overlooking Riss Lake helped Graves, whose fourth-quarter 2007 fundraising report showed his Democratic opponent, Kay Barnes, had outraised him, $345,000 to $202,000.
The president’s help was just another sign of how competitively the 6th District race is regarded. Vice President Dick Cheney already has visited to raise money for Graves, making him the first congressman in the country this election cycle to enjoy fundraising stops from both Bush and Cheney.
Shortly before the fundraiser, Barnes spoke to retirees at nearby Wexford Place, a retirement community near Parkville, and proclaimed that Bush and Graves are “out of touch” with the economic climate.
“Just last week, President Bush said the economy was ‘just fine,’” the former Kansas City mayor said. “That’s an indication that he just doesn’t get it. And my opponent, who is so loyal to the president, is out of touch with the economic climate.”
Bush, who had flown into Kansas City on Thursday night, began his morning Friday at the InterContinental Hotel on the Country Club Plaza by signing a presidential proclamation in honor of American Heart Month.
In a three-minute signing ceremony beneath a glimmering crystal chandelier, Bush sat beside Joyce Cullen of Kansas City. Cullen credits Laura Bush for saving her life in 2003 when the first lady talked about the symptoms of heart disease during a visit to St. Luke’s Hospital.
Cullen recognized she had some of those symptoms and went to the hospital, where she soon suffered a heart attack. She has recovered and become a heart-disease-prevention advocate.
“Part of the reason she is here is because she understands what Laura understands and what a lot of Americans are coming to understand, and that is heart disease is the No. 1 killer of both women and men, and that through awareness of this disease, people are more likely to be able to recognize the symptoms and deal with it,” Bush said.
His next stop was the meeting with area business leaders at Eggtc. Restaurant, 51st and Main streets. Those attending included Carl Schramm, president and chief executive officer of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City; National Economic Council Chairman Keith Hennessey; ViraCor Laboratories chief Phillip Short; and Bennett Packaging’s Kathy Bennett, among others.
Reporters were excluded, but White House spokesman Tony Fratto said the business leaders told the president that they weren’t noticing an economic slowdown. Among the challenges the businesses face, Fratto said, is finding enough trained workers.
Bush also was told that the stimulus package would enable them to hire more workers and buy new equipment, Fratto said.
But it was Bush’s experience at Kaleidoscope, the interactive learning center at Hallmark, that kept him smiling for almost the entire 15 minutes of his stay there. There kids from Horizon Elementary School in Shawnee milled around him amid their projects, such as making their own greeting cards. Bush was just another adult in the crowd, and the kids mostly ignored him.
At one point, Bush turned two boys, 6-year-old Eli Lockhart and his buddy Alex Harris, toward the clicking cameras of the nearby news photographers and posed with them. Both boys continued waving at the cameras even after Bush moved on.
A few moments later, the president stopped next to a little girl at a station where children make their own greeting cards. With tape and a red magic marker, Bush set to work, sticking a bright star on the front of his card, which he turned into a gesture for Trey Graves, the 14-year-old son of the congressman. Trey underwent an emergency appendectomy Friday morning.
Inside, Bush scrawled this:
Trey,
Get well soon.
George W. Bush.
The Star’s David Knopf contributed to this report.
I would like to swipe that smile from Bush's face but doubt...
if I ever get the opportunity. To me this trip was about money and nothing much else. He was here to get some money for certain people and to talk to the big boys about how they can get some more money. I wonder if he talked about Exxon's big profits and I wonder if he talked to an average citizen about how they are handling the high gasoline prices - I highly doubt it.
The economy is in the crunch now due partly to people buying houses they cannot afford and lenders lending money when they shouldn't have - credit card mentality. Now Bush wants to give every citizen so many dollars and has told them to go out and spend it - not save it or pay off bills or something else halfway sensible. And the frosting on the cake is that our Congress from both sides of the aisle is going along with this. I am far from a financial expert but this reasoning is absolutely ridiculous to me. I have always tried very hard to spend less than I make and it hasn't failed me yet so I have hard time relating to some of the stuff going on in today's personal and government financial plan.
I'll put my rebate, if I get one, into the savings account for my grandaughter's college eduction - I'm sure she will need it and whole bunch more.