Look to Twin Cities for jobs plan, policy wonk tells Obama

A Washington policy wonk thinks President Obama should look at a new Twin Cities job development plan as he travels through Minnesota and the Midwest explaining how he intends to create jobs in an economy burdened with high unemployment. Mark Muro, who directs the metropolitan policy program at the Brookings Institution touted the "bottom-up" jobs program that uses regional cooperation, mentoring of entrepreneurs and clustering of similar industries to create and sustain jobs. "While he's out in the heartland discussing strategies to kick start growth, the president would also do well to head for the region's cities and metropolitan areas where the majority of jobs are lost or created," Muro wrote in a blog Monday. The Minnesota plan doesn't depend on big national initiatives of the sort Obama will discuss throughout his three-state bus tour, Muro said. It relies instead on local development organizations teaming up in ways that Washington's partisan political tribes no longer seem capable of doing. "President Obama should check out these doings in the Twin Cities and see what Washington can do to support them," Muro wrote.