Obama to hit road after State of the Union

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WASHINGTON, Jan. 18 (UPI) -- U.S. President Barack Obama will hit the road after his State of the Union speech, traveling to five states in three days, his spokesman said Wednesday.

White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters the day after Obama delivers the annual address Tuesday, the president will make appearances in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and Phoenix before ending the day in Las Vegas. He will attend events in the Las Vegas area and the Denver area Jan. 26 before traveling to Detroit that evening. On Jan. 27, the president will deliver remarks in the Detroit area before returning to Washington.

Carney said the president would be "talking about the subjects that he [will have] raised in the State of the Union," including economic growth and job creation.

Asked about Republican criticism of Obama's planned trip to Florida Thursday -- while GOP presidential hopefuls are still hammering each other ahead of the South Carolina primary -- Carney said the Orlando trip is part of the president's policy of trying to meet with people from as many states as possible.

He said Obama would "unveil a strategy that will significantly help boost tourism and travel, which is an important and sometimes overlooked sector in the U.S. economy." He said it would be part of Obama's "We Can't Wait" series of executive actions to boost job growth.

Carney said waiting for the Republican nominating process to play out "would make it impossible for us for -- if we were guessing in the weeks in advance that we make travel arrangements like this, it would make it very hard for us to go to many, many places."

"This is -- it's obvious when you're making a tourism and travel announcement that one of the premier sites of U.S. tourism industry is Orlando, so it seems pretty self-evident that you would do that," Carney said.