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JAMESTOWN — The Tuesday special at the Fresh Manna Cafe next week will be pot roast, and owner Marcia Devlin hopes President Barack Obama will stop by and try some while he’s in town.

Obama starts a three-day bus tour of North Carolina and Virginia on Monday, during which he will urge Congress to act on legislation he says will create jobs, and his itinerary is replete with small towns like Jamestown.

“I want him to help people focus on where they live and supporting the businesses there,” Devlin said.

If people support their hometown communities rather than buy online, she said, that could do a lot to help the economy.

What she is likely to hear when Obama gives a speech at the YMCA on GTCC’s campus is what Congress should do to nurse the ailing economy back from the brink of recession. Senate Republicans last week blocked consideration of a jobs package the president designed, and he is taking to the stump to urge that parts of his bill go forward.

When the president was in Raleigh last month, he suggested Republican lawmakers are angling for partisan advantage rather than thinking about the good of the country. Observers say that message is likely to be repeated on this trip.

“The question the president is going to have to go pose to the country is: What are we going to do now?” said Dee Dee Myers, who served as former President Bill Clinton’s press secretary. “Are we going to sit here for another year while we wait for an election to run its course?”

The president’s original jobs bill would cut payroll taxes, put money into building highways and schools, spend $35 billion to prevent public employee layoffs and extend unemployment insurance programs. To pay for those and other stimulus measures, the president would raise taxes on Americans earning more than $1 million.

That has drawn fire from Republicans, who say any effort to create jobs should include tax cuts.

“We know from the first stimulus bill that it didn’t work,” said Rep. Virginia Foxx, a Banner Elk Republican whose district Obama will visit Monday during a stop near North Wilkesboro.

Asked if she sees anything in the president’s original jobs proposal she likes, Foxx said no. She said the nation’s unemployment rate has increased under Obama because his fiscal policies aren’t working.

“The technique the president wants to use is just a sham for raising taxes,” Foxx said. As for cutting payroll taxes, she said, “all that does is make Social Security insolvent earlier.”

The nonpartisan Factcheck.org confirms payroll tax cuts will bring the point at which trust fund revenues are unable to meet promised payments sooner than the current projection of sometime in 2037.

Myers said Republicans have favored payroll tax cuts to spark economic growth because it leaves more money with working families.

“How come they’re against them now?” she asked, suggesting their resistance has more to do with politics than policy.

Foxx pointed out that no Democrats had signed onto the president’s jobs bill as filed in the House, saying that shows the president’s proposals are unpopular with Republicans and Democrats alike.

Rep. Howard Coble, a Greensboro Republican, said virtually all members of his party would resist any effort to raise taxes, but he said the president’s call to invest in roads and bridges makes sense. “I think there’s much to be said for that,” he said. Construction would make needed repairs as well as help employ the unemployed, Coble said.

“It seems to me that the president has been very unreasonable insisting on his whole package,” he said, adding Congress should pass a combination of Obama’s ideas mixed with GOP proposals.

Obama will find friendlier politicians here as well. U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan, a Greensboro Democrat, supported the president’s jobs package. She’s due to spend time with him in Asheville on Monday.

Obama’s call for bipartisan cooperation aligns with sentiments Hagan expressed during visits to her home state.

“People tell me everywhere they are sick of the petty partisanship,” she said. “The Senate’s now going to start looking at ways to pass individual components of the (president’s) bill.”

Gov. Bev Perdue left for a trip to China and Japan on Saturday, so she will not be around when the president visits. On Friday, she told reporters in High Point she hopes the president will meet people working to find jobs in the down economy.

“I’m hoping he once again gets the feel of North Carolina and the fact that this is the greatest state in America, but many of our people are unemployed and we need some kind of jobs assistance,” Perdue said.

Based on the stops White House officials have described, Obama is focusing his attention on small towns. That fits with his calls for government action to benefit struggling businesses on the nation’s Main Streets versus big players on Wall Street.

Susan Stringer, owner of the Soap Lady shop in Jamestown, said Friday that she hoped Obama would come to listen, not just to deliver his own message.

“If you want to see what’s going on on Main Street,” she said, “here we are.”

Contact Mark Binker at (919) 832-5549 or mark. binker@news-record.com