Obama holds town hall meeting at LinkedIn

SAN FRANCISCO (KFSN) -- President Barack Obama made another visit to the Bay Area. He came to raise money and to raise hopes that his jobs creation plan will work. His town hall was at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. The event was hosted by the professional networking site LinkedIn.

Obama told the Silicon Valley audience people who've been blessed with success should do their part to help the rest.

"And I say that because whenever America has moved forward, it's because we've moved forward together," said Obama.

That set up the question of the day that came from former Google employee Doug Edwards -- the 59th person ever hired at Google.

"My question is ...would you please raise my taxes?" asked Edwards.

The president responded as often has that raising taxes on the rich is not class warfare.

"This is not an issue of do we somehow try and punish those who've done well? That's the last thing we want to do, it's a question of how can we afford to continue to make the investments that are going to propel America forward?" said Obama.

Former Google employee Doug Edwards liked the answer.

"I hope that he continues to stand strong for repealing the Bush tax cuts," said Edwards.

But retired Navy pilot Wayne Kulick of Phoenix doesn't agree. He asked the president to do more to help veterans and afterward told me the president's proposed tax increase is the wrong approach.

"It's going to have an effect on the economy and it's going to have an effect on jobs and it's going to be counterproductive to what the original intent was," said Kulick.

But when we ran the president's call for tax increases past the former chair of the California Republican Party, Duf Sundheim, we didn't get the party line.

"I think there have been some people who've benefited either through special interests or their situation that have benefited disproportionally ...and I think we need to put all things on the table," said Sundheim.

Sundheim says tax increases should be on the table as long as spending cuts are a bigger part of the package.

"We do need a compromise, we do need to bring something to the table, if the Democrats are bringing something to the table," said Sundheim.

ABC30 asked Sundheim if his comments signal a shift in the Republican Party stance on tax increases, he said no it's just his opinion, but it's new. And what we heard from the president on Monday, we've heard many times before.

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president barack obama, linkedin, bay area, politics, mark matthews

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