Obama sits down one-on-one with 7 News
SUNRISE, Fla. (WSVN) -- Now that Barack Obama has turned his attention to Florida, voters have a lot of questions for him. Seven's Dave Kartunen sat down with the senator for a one-on one interview.
It was his first intimate interview in South Florida since his campaign returned to the Sunshine State where the democratic presidential candidate will confront a worried electorate, first and foremost, over gas prices and the economy. "The truth is, we're not going to be able to lower gas prices immediately," he said, "because it's a world market.
"What we can do is provide people immediate relief. I want to accelerate an additional stimulus to cover some of these rising costs, and that should be part of an effort to stimulate the economy generally.
"Next year, I want to pass a middle class tax cut, $1,000 per family per year, to off-set not just the rising costs of gas but food, as well as rising medical costs, and ,long term, what we have to do is invest in alternative energy and increase fuel efficiency standards on cars so that we are using less oil, and we can depress the world price for oil, but we're not going to have any short-term gimmicks or solutions to this thing. This is a long-term challenge."
Obama's key speech Friday was to the Cuban-American National Foundation where he proposed loosening restrictions on sending money and traveling to the island. "If you lower travel restrictions first, do you bring the carrot before the stick?" Kartunen asked,
"No, because the truth is those benefits accrue to the people in Cuba and Cuban-Americans," responded Obama. "It goes directly to people, but I will not be removing the embargo, and I certainly would not be meeting with Raul Castro without preparation. What I have said, though, is if I think it could help liberalization in Cuba, at some point, I would be meeting with him."
But Cuban-Americans weren't the first skeptical constituency he faced in South Florida. Thursday was peppered with questions by members of a Jewish synagogue, who have been on the receiving end of e-mails attacking the senator's stance on Israel. "You addressed this e-mail without even being prompted: three questions for Senator Obama from Republicans. You answered the questions, but my question for you is: are you being 'swift-boated' on Israel?"
"I think there's no doubt there's been a lot of rumor-mongering. I don't know where it's come from because it started very early. But there have been a lot of e-mails sent with false rumors. Oh, he's Muslim, which is not true, I'm Christian. That he's anti-Israel. That's not true, I've got 100 percent voting record when it comes to Israel, and so, these are the tactics of political campaigns, and obviously, the fact that I wasn't campaigning here, meant that they could get some traction."
And, to date, Florida's primary results still don't count, but Obama signaled again he wants the delegation seated at the convention in August. "We've already sent a strong message that we want to get this resolved as quickly as possible because I want to pivot to issues like gas prices, home foreclosures, making sure people have good jobs, issues of disaster insurance and catastrophe insurance here in Florida. Those are the issues that ultimately, we should be focusing on."
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