Obama Pushes Job Plan On Bus Tour

Obama’s tour takes him through North Carolina and Virginia, two crucial states in his push to pass his job legislation.  This move comes days after Senate Republicans successfully blocked the $447 billion jobs package that Obama contends would spur job creation.

President Obama has been criticizing Republicans for breaking up his plan and not listening to the American public.

“If they vote against taking steps that we know will put Americans back to work right now…then they’re not going to have to answer to me,” Obama told a crowd in North Carolina. “They’re going to have to answer to you.”

Republicans have criticized the taxpayer-financed, campaign-style swing as a campaign effort for Obama, who won both states in 2008 but faces daunting odds in 2012 with unemployment rates remaining high. As Obama arrived in North Carolina, the Mooresville, N.C.-based Lowe's Inc. announced it would close 20 stores, laying off 1,950 workers, and open fewer than half of the new stores it had planned.

“Democrats have a choice: they can try to divide the country along partisan fault lines for the sake of an election that is still 13 months away,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnel said in a statement, “or they can work with us on passing bipartisan legislation — such as tax reform, domestic energy production, regulatory reform — that gets at the root of the jobs crisis now.”

President Obama plans to continue traveling throughout the country, pitching his plans to get Americans back to work.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.