Obama Calls for Day Care Expansion During Lawrence Stop January 23, 2015

President Barack Obama called for a major expansion of daycare during a visit to the University of Kansas campus Thursday.

Obama called for adding 100 million more child to what he called “affordable high quality” day care.

He also proposed a tax credit for low income families of up to $3,000, per child, per year to support it.

“It is time we stop treating child care as a side issue, or a women’s issue. This is a family issue,” the President said.

The White House tipped its hand on the focus of the speech about an hour before the President made his remarks.

The President stopped at the Lawrence ahead Start Center at the Plymouth Congregational Church to visit with the staff and some of the 48 kids enrolled in the program there.

Obama told several thousand people at the Anschutz Pavilion on the KU campus how some of the children shouted’ ” I know you! I see you on TV!,” as they laughed.

The Presidential visit to Lawrence was the first time in more than100 years since a sitting President had visited the city. The last one came when William Howard Taft was in the White House.

This was the second stop on the Presidential post-State of the Union tour that took him to another conservative state, Idaho.

In his speech, the President repeated some of his claims from the Tuesday night Congressional address.

“So the verdict is in. Middle class economics works,” he declared.

The White House says Obama took the tour to conservative states to claim that his ideas about helping middle class, working families succeed everywhere in the nation, no matter what the political landscape.

“It’s going to make our economy strong, not just next year, of for a few years, but deep into the century ahead,” Obama said.