Obama embarks on three-day Midwestern campaign event

President Obama kicked off his three-day Midwestern tour Monday.

While the White House bills it as an opportunity for the president to talk about job growth and economic policy, some say the tour is nothing more than a campaign event.

President Obama visited Minnesota and Iowa Monday,  part of a three-day bus tour to talk with people in their own communities about economic policy and job growth.

"I'm gonna need your help to make it happen - you've got to send a message to Washington that it's time for games to stop, it's time to put country first," Obama told the crowd in Cannon Falls, Minnesota, informs OzarksFirst.com.

Obama has tried to blunt such criticism by suggesting that after Congress spent months gridlocked over the national debt ceiling, lawmakers needed to return home to hear from their constituents.

Waiting for the president on a farm in Decorah, Bev Schroeder, 55, said she shared Obama's view that the GOP had been a roadblock. "I'm trying to think of one time where he had some bipartisan support on something having to do with the economy," said Schroeder, a resident of Urbandale, Iowa.

Not everyone in the audiences was an Obama supporter. Adam Nord, at the Minnesota event, was unhappy with the Democratic healthcare overhaul. "I don't think we should be forced to pay for healthcare if we don't need it," said Nord, 31, of Cannon Falls. "The government is going to start telling you you can't eat at McDonald's anymore", reports Los Angeles Times.

The president told the people of Decorah he is just as frustrated as they are that congress wrapped up its session and headed home without passing a number of bill; including some which he says would lower the tax burden for the middle class. But The President won't call congress back for a special session. He believes having this break may be just what members of congress need to put the needs of the American people before that of their parties, says WXOW.com.