President Barack Obama speaks at the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg, Mo., in this file photo.VIDEO
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Barack Obama will visit Chattanooga on Tuesday for the first time as president to pitch his vision of helping expand middle-class jobs.
Obama will tour the 1 million-square-foot distribution center Amazon opened in the Enterprise Industrial Park two years ago. The fulfillment center in Chattanooga employs 1,800 full-time workers and is among five facilities Amazon has built in Tennessee since 2011 that collectively have added more than 5,000 full-time and seasonal jobs in the Volunteer State — the biggest job addition in the state by a private company in the past decade.
Obama will use the Amazon expansion to help highlight what he says is an improving economy but one that needs to do more to help boost the middle class.
In a speech Wednesday in Galesburg, Ill., Obama cast himself as the champion for middle-class Americans struggling to make ends meet. He chided Washington for having “taken its eye off the ball” and declared that the economy would be the “highest priority” of his second term.