Obama defends government action in Midwest bus tour

DECORAH, Iowa -- President Obama kicked off a three-day Midwest bus tour Monday by pledging to present Congress with a detailed jobs plan and warned that "if they don't get it done, then we'll be running against a Congress that won't work for the American people."

It was the president's most direct threat to Republicans who control the House and can block action in the Senate against a jobs package that already includes a payroll tax cut, extended unemployment benefits and a new public works program.

Obama's heated rhetoric was welcomed at his second town-hall-style meeting of the day, coming after several people asked why he wasn't being tougher with Congress.

Decrying his GOP opponents' unwillingness to compromise on jobs, health care and cutting budget deficits, Obama told small, supportive audiences amid the farms and factories of rural Iowa and Minnesota that government can help if his opponents quit playing politics.

"You've got to send a message to Washington that it's time for the games to stop. It's time to put country first," he told about 500 people at a picturesque riverfront park in Cannon Falls, Minn. Congress, he said, needs to "put the next generation ahead of the next election."

In one of his strongest defenses of the health care overhaul he signed last year, the president ridiculed Republicans' attacks on "Obamacare."

"I have no problem with folks saying, 'Obama cares.' I do care," he said. "If the other side wants to be the side that doesn't care, that's fine with me."

The White House has cast the three-day, five-stop trip as an opportunity for the president to escape Washington after the months-long battle over raising the nation's $14.3 trillion debt limit and reducing its $1.4 trillion annual deficit. He will lead a rural economic forum in Iowa today and hold a total of four town-hall-style events, including two in western Illinois on Wednesday.

Still, the trip had stark political undertones. It came two days after Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann won the Iowa straw poll and Texas Gov. Rick Perry entered the race. Both have sharply criticized Obama's handling of the nation's economy.