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Weekly Address: President Obama’s Plan for a Strong Middle Class

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From the White House – Weekly Address

In this week’s address, President Obama calls for quick action on the proposals he made during the State of the Union to grow our economy and create jobs, including making America a magnet for manufacturing, strengthening our education system through high-quality preschool for every child, and raising the minimum wage.

Transcript

After shedding jobs for more than 10 years, our manufacturers have added about 500,000 jobs over the past three.  What we need to do now is simple.  We need to accelerate that trend.  We need to launch manufacturing hubs across the country that will transform hard-hit regions into global centers of high-tech jobs and manufacturing.  We need to make our tax code more competitive, ending tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas, and rewarding companies that create jobs here at home.  And we need to invest in the research and technology that will allow us to harness more of our own energy and put more people back to work repairing our crumbling roads and bridges.

No one in America should work full-time and raise their children in poverty.  So let’s raise the minimum wage so that it’s a wage you can live on.  And it’s time to harness the talents and ingenuity of hardworking immigrants by finally passing comprehensive immigration reform – securing our borders, establishing a responsible path to earned citizenship, and attracting the highly-skilled entrepreneurs and engineers that will help create jobs.

In the coming weeks and months, our work won’t be easy, and we won’t agree on everything.  But America only moves forward when we do so together – when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations.  That’s the American story.  And that is how we will write the next great chapter – together.

Thanks and have a great weekend.


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/ 7 Comments

7 comments

  1. JanF

    Obama, winning the argument

    In his bid to be remembered as a transformational leader, President Obama is following the playbook of an ideological opposite, Margaret Thatcher. First you win the argument, she used to say, then you win the vote.

    Obama is gradually winning the argument about what government can and should do. His State of the Union address was an announcement of that fact – and a warning to conservatives that, to remain relevant, they will have to move beyond the premise that government is always the problem and never the solution. […]

    Ronald Reagan’s conservative ideas had been corrupted by his followers into a kind of anti-government nihilism. Reagan wanted to shrink government; today’s Republican Party wants to destroy it.

    That is an important point. The Republican party’s new standard bearer, Marco Rubio, and their ideological leader, Paul Ryan both benefited from government programs that helped them go to school and helped their families survive and thrive.

    Government programs, like those President Obama has in his plan, will give others a chance at the American dream.

  2. dear occupant

    raise the minimum wage, it’s certainly needed if not long overdue for working folks. whether it will ever come up for a vote in Obama’s term is another matter but raising the issue, having Republicans respond is a good strategy. get them on the record again and again opposing it as they ineveitably will.

    it will pay dividends later.

  3. princesspat

    ….watched the SOTU speech, and excitedly, yet wistfully said, “we want to live in that America”, adding “can you imagine how great this country could be?” I loved seeing their excitement…..and their absolute disdain for the Cruz, Ryan, Rubio contingent the R’s are trotting out.

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