IOWA — President Barack Obama announced fresh steps to boost rural hiring on the second day of a bus tour through the U.S. heartland to explain his economic and job policies to anxious voters.

Pres. Obama, who began his three-day tour in Minnesota, was visiting Iowa Tuesday and will end the tour in his home state of Illinois. He embarked on this bus tour along the back roads of the rural Midwest to press his case.

Pres. Obama won all three states in the 2008 presidential election, although Iowa has recently played host to Republicans vying to battle him for the White House next year. They have been criticizing his record over the ballooning U.S. deficit.