Vice President Joe Biden hailed community colleges as part of the fabric of America’s communities as he joined his wife, Dr. Jill Biden, and Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis on the last stop of the Community College to Career bus tour on Friday at Davidson County Community College.
The North Carolina stop was the final one for the tour after rolling through Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia. The tour visited seven community colleges in two days.
The tour aimed to shine a spotlight on the importance of community colleges in the training of American workers.
“Over the past 18 years, I have seen the power of community colleges to change lives,” Jill Biden told the crowd.
“We have pride in our great state universities, but we feel like a part of our community colleges,” the vice president said. “Community colleges are part of the fabric of our communities.”
President Barack Obama’s fiscal year 2013 budget proposal includes a new $8-billion Community to Career fund to forge partnerships between community colleges and businesses to provide training for workers.
“Americans are tired of being tired,” Joe Biden said. “It’s clear that the American people have decided it’s time to get up. They’re tired of being told that we’re in a long, slow drift.”
“After three years of failed promises and empty rhetoric, the Obama administration hasn’t delivered the jobs or the college affordability they promised to North Carolina’s students,” Republican National Committee spokesman Matt Connelly said in a written response to Biden’s address.
“President Obama’s failed economic policies have caused employment for 18- to 24-year-olds to drop to their lowest level since the Great Depression. With young Americans suffering disproportionately in the Obama economy, there are no amounts of lofty slogans or campaign events that can erase President Obama’s failed promises to students.”
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