While President Barack Obama addressed a crowd in the battleground state of Nevada on Wednesday, a heckler began yelling but was eventually drowned out by the audience chanting, “four more years.”
When the noise began to die down, President Obama said “that young man probably needed a good teacher … we all need it.”
The Congressional Budget Office released its updated economic forecast on Wednesday, predicting that the U.S. deficit will hit $1.1 trillion by the end of this year. Despite the news, Obama pushed for the hiring of more teachers in public schools by the federal government during his speech.
“If we want America to lead the 21st century, we’ve got to give all of our children the best education possible from the day they start in pre-school to the day they start their career because other countries are racing, they are doing everything they can to out-educate us because they know that means that they’ll be able to out-complete us,” Obama said.
“They know that new businesses, new industries will take root and create jobs wherever the best educated, most highly skilled workers are.”
Obama criticized Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney for saying the Department of Education should “push back” against teachers.
“He thinks that teachers need to have somebody policing them and checking them and that’s the main purpose of the Department of Education. That’s like saying you keep the Department of Agriculture around so you can push around farmers,” Obama said.
In May, Romney said the federal government needs to “push back against” the teachers unions.
“Education has to be managed at the state level, not at the federal level,” Romney said on Fox News. “Will there be any of flow through of funds to the states? Yes but the role I see that ought to remain in the president’s agenda with regards to education is to push back against the federal teachers unions. Those federal teachers unions have too much power. In some cases, they overwhelm the states, they overwhelm the local school districts, we have got to put the kids first and put these teachers unions behind.”