President Barack Obama is heading to friendly territory to push his plan to spend billions more on education, meeting with Apple’s ailing leader Steve Jobs and the chiefs of Facebook and Google in the San Francisco Bay area.
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He’ll also tour Intel Corp.’s semiconductor manufacturing facility in Oregon.
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Obama wants to spend more on education despite his call for a five-year freeze on other government spending. He says an educated work force will attract jobs and help the U.S. compete with the rest of the world. The budget proposal he delivered this week seeks $13 billion more for education.
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His visits Thursday and Friday to politically friendly areas on the West Coast are partly designed to spotlight his focus on education and prod Republicans to support the higher spending.
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Republicans are pursuing steep spending cuts instead.
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With the trip, Obama is also trying to burnish his image as a leader who is listening to the ideas of innovators and who, while faced with a tough budget environment, isn’t afraid to push for spending increases in areas such as education and clean energy that he thinks will create lasting, forward-looking jobs.
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Obama was to meet leaders in technology and innovation, including Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg, at a private home in the San Francisco Bay area Thursday. The social networking site has more than 500 million users worldwide and has turned its 26-year-old founder into a billionaire.
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Among the other business leaders Obama will meet are GE chairman Jeffrey Immelt, who Obama recently named head of his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness; Google chief executive Eric Schmidt; and Jobs, the Apple founder and CEO who announced last month that he was taking his third medical leave.
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The White House said the meeting is another in the series of periodic discussions the president has been having with business leaders to explore…