A Montco Toy Factory Is Backdrop For Obama's Visit and Budget Push
By Pat Loeb
HATFIELD, Pa. (CBS) -- President Barack Obama on Friday makes his first trip outside the White House since the election, and it brings him to a Hatfield (Montgomery County) toy manufacturing facility, where he would be pushing his deficit reduction ideas.
Michael Araten, CEO of K'nex (top photo), on Wednesday was showing off the factory that President Obama will tour on Friday.
K'nex makes toy cars and children's building sets, including the iconic "Lincoln Logs" and "Tinkertoys."
Araten says he believes the president wanted to see the K'nex facility because of what it represented about local manufacturing.
"We had moved a bunch of stuff to Asia, but over the last four years we moved almost everything back," Araten tells KYW Newsradio, "so now 95 percent of component parts are made here -- and we're working toward 100 percent."
The president's main message, though, is likely to be that companies like K'nex depend on middle-class consumers, so preserving middle-class tax cuts will keep the factory humming while letting tax cuts on the wealthy expire will cut the deficit.
Without action, all the tax cuts expire January 1st.
