Woman who questioned Obama’s handling of economy at town hall is laid off

Back in September, at a town hall meeting broadcast nationally by CNBC, Velma Hart became the face of Americans anxious for their future. Hart stood before the microphone and gave President Obama a dressing-down about the state of the economy.

"I am a chief financial officer for a veterans service organization, AmVets here in Washington. I'm also a mother, I'm a wife, I'm an American veteran, and I'm one of your middle-class Americans," Hart told the president. "And quite frankly, I'm exhausted. I'm exhausted of defending you, defending your administration, defending the mantle of change I voted for, and deeply disappointed with where we are right now. I've been told that I voted for a man who said he was going to change things in a meaningful way for the middle class. I'm one of those people and I'm waiting, sir, I'm waiting. I don't feel it yet."

[Rewind: 'Exhausted' Hart joins chorus in Obama's very bad week]

You can watch the video of Hart's remarks in the clip above.

Hart also noted that she and her husband were worried about reverting back to the "hot dogs and beans era" of their lives, and asked the president a pointed question: "Is this my new reality?"

[Opinion: A rebuttal to Velma Hart]

Sadly, it may be, at least for a little while, as Velma Hart has been laid off by AmVets.

"It's not anything she did," Jim King, the national executive director of AmVets, told the Washington Post's Michelle Singletary. "She got bit by the same snake that has bit a lot of people. It was a move to cut our bottom line. Most not-for-profits are seeing their money pinched."

[Related: Jobless claims rise, but bigger trend offers hope]

Saying that Hart had been a "good employee," King added that the move "was just a matter of looking at the bottom line and where could we make the best cuts and survive."

[Rewind: 'Rent is too damn high' candidate captures spotlight]

President Obama, in closing his lengthy response to Hart's "new reality" question at the town hall in September, assured Hart that the country is "moving in the right direction." That's probably an especially tough case to make to Hart today. (Hart told The Lookout through a friend that she's unavailable for comment Tuesday.)

Hart, did however, tell CNBC that her misfortune has again brought home the suffering of many other Americans struggling with the same circumstances. "What's in my heart is: Now -- even more than I did before -- I appreciate what millions of people who are in my condition now have been experiencing for the last two, three, four years," she said. "Of course I'm afraid. Everybody's a little afraid." She also stressed that she remains a supporter of President Obama.

President Barack Obama will embark on another major overseas visit this week, including a second visit to Europe as President. Although this visit is symbolically loaded – Obama will visit the Buchenwald Concentration Camp and commemorate the D-Day landings in Normandy, France – there are still things that the President needs to achieve. America’s image to the rest of the world is important, and trips like this set the stage for our diplomatic policy in the War on Terrorism.

President Barack Obama warned Sunday of "serious issues" in the disputed Afghan elections and vowed domestic political concerns would not dictate whether he sends more troops to the unpopular war.
Ahead of the UN and G20 summits this week, Obama also denied "paranoid" Russian objections had dictated his decision to abandon a US missile shield in Eastern Europe and said North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il seemed "healthy" and in "control."
The president's media offensive came a day before he is due to head to New York for his debut United Nations general assembly as president, and the G20 economic crisis summit of developed and developing nations later in the week in Pittsburgh.
As allegations of fraud mount following Afghanistan's elections in August, complicating Obama's attempt to maintain failing public support for the eight-year war, the president made his most expansive comments yet on the conduct of the polls.
"It did not go as smoothly as I think we would have hoped, and there are some serious issues in terms of how the election was conducted in some parts of the country," Obama said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
Obama added on CNN that the world would have to "wait and see" if reported widespread fraud had a substantial impact on the election, which President Hamid Karzai appears to have won.
The president also weighed in on the raging debate about a widely expected request by the US military for more troops in Afghanistan, as he digests war commander General Stanley McChrystal's classified report on US strategy.
"We're going to test whatever resources we have against our strategy, which is if by sending young men and women into harm's way, we are defeating Al-Qaeda," he said on ABC.
"(If) that can be shown to a skeptical audience -- namely me, somebody who is always asking hard questions about deploying troops -- then we will do what's required to keep the American people safe," Obama said.
The president also gave his most detailed assessment yet of the priceless intelligence brought back by former president Bill Clinton from his mission to Pyongyang in August to win the release of two US journalists.
The president told CNN he had been interested by Clinton's assessment that North Korean leader Kim, with whom Washington is locked in a dispute over nuclear weapons, was "pretty healthy and in control."
"President Clinton had a chance to see him close up and have conversations with him," Obama added.
"There's no doubt that this is somebody who I think for a while people thought was slipping away. He's reasserted himself."
Speculation has surrounded Kim's health for months amid signs he suffered a stroke last year and was preparing the succession for his son Kim Jong-Un.
Days before meeting Russian President Dmitry Medvedev at the United Nations, the president also denied that his decision to shelve a plan by the former Bush administration for a missile shield in Europe was based on Moscow's objections.
"Russia had always been paranoid about this, but George Bush was right, this wasn't a threat to them," Obama told CBS show "Face the Nation."
"The Russians don't make determinations about what our defense posture is," he said.
"If the by-product of it is that the Russians feel a little less paranoid and are now willing to work more effectively with us to deal with threats like ballistic missiles from Iran or nuclear development in Iran, you know, then that's a bonus."
Obama also made an attempt to bolster his push to pass his top priority health care initiative, amid opposition from Republicans and even reservations among some fellow Democrats in Congress.
He dismissed the view that the furor over his plan was a symptom of racism.
"Anytime there's a president who is proposing big changes that seem to (involve) the size of government, that gets everybody's juices flowing and sometimes you get some pretty noisy debate.
"This isn't a radical plan. This isn't grafting a single payer model onto the United States. It's simply trying to deal with what everybody acknowledges is a big problem."
On the economy, ahead of the G20 summit, Obama warned that although there are signs that growth may soon resume in the United States, there is little evidence of better news on unemployment.
"I want to be clear, that probably the jobs picture is not going to improve considerably and it could even get a little bit worse over the next couple of months," Obama, who already has predicted the national jobless rate will hit 10 percent, told CNN.

Now that he's called Kanye West a "jackass" -- unofficially, of course -- President Obama forsakes the sedentary business of governing again today to head back out on the campaign trail, which is more fun anyway in his profession.

On Monday the president flew to New York City to straighten out the financial mess one year after it blew up and to issue new warnings and announce new regulatory efforts.

Today he's on the road again. He'll make three stops -- one in Ohio and two in Pennsylvania, including his newly-adopted favorite city of Pittsburgh. In Ohio, the president will talk economy with auto workers and, as he did Monday in New York, likely profess that he sees more signs that the hard times are truly ending.

Not an easy argument for anyone to make, even if they are eloquent, with unemployment still above 9%. And the anxiety and fears almost palpable among many.

This morning the new Washington Post-ABC News Poll reveals that Americans aren't buying Obama's line of economic improvement, at least not yet. The results show only 51% approve of the....


...freshman president's handling of the economy while an even worse 39% approve of his job addressing -- or not addressing -- the gargantuan federal deficits projected way out past Obama's two terms and into Sarah Palin's first.

Nearly 60% of Americans, according to the poll, are worried over job losses and pay cuts in coming months. This is not usually fertile ground for acceptance of the kind of major, ill-defined, costly changes that Obama seeks to impose in so many areas.

In Pittsburgh, Obama, having just slapped special tariffs on Chinese tires, will be heartily welcomed by his union pals at the AFL-CIO convention.

And then it's on to Philadelphia to keep part of his promise to campaign for ex-Republican-now-Democrat Sen. Arlen Specter. There, the president will appear at a reception and fundraiser for Specter, who would really like a sixth Senate term. But he's facing a rigorous primary challenge from Rep. Joe Sestak, despite the Democrat president's support.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, the struggle over healthcare reform measures has been recently overshadowed by public debate over whether the weekend crowds of tea-partyers was either something like 60,000 or two million.

Also being argued: the outrageous impropriety or courageous lone voice of Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina, who called the president a liar over healthcare reform coverage of illegal immigrants. (They aren't covered specifically, but there's no way specified in the legislation to check a patient's immigration status.)

The president calls these disputes media sideshows. And perhaps he means it. But they also serve him well from a strategic communications viewpoint.

By his unsolicited shout during Obama's address to a joint session of Congress, Republican Wilson handed Democrats and their cable claque an ideal distraction that's endured nearly a week already.

Remember back in August when members of Congress visited where they used to live and folks started looking at the actual details of the healthcare plans and sharing their detailed opinions out loud at town hall meetings? What happened then?

Poll support for the plan began to crumble, especially among independents who didn't realize they were voting for quite so much expensive change last November.

So the argument got turned around to whether these unhappy town hallers were being rude or maybe even racist. Nevermind their specifics.

Now with the president off touring two nearby states, the public argument in the Capitol is whether Wilson needs to re-apologize and he says no way and back and forth they go, all the while both sides raising money from the fight. While out of the spotlight the committees quietly wrap up the details of the healthcare measures.