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Weekly Address: President Obama – Restoring Opportunity for All

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From the White House – Weekly Address

In his weekly address, President Obama discussed the goals he laid out in the State of the Union address to expand opportunity for all so that every American can get ahead and have a shot at creating a better life for their kids.

Transcript: Restoring Opportunity for All

Hi, everybody.

This week, I delivered my State of the Union Address. Today, here’s the three-minute version.

After four years of economic growth with eight million new private sector jobs, our unemployment rate is the lowest it’s been in more than five years.  And with the economy speeding up, companies say they intend to hire more people this year.

But while those at the top are doing better than ever, average wages have barely budged.  Inequality has deepened.  Too many Americans are working harder and harder just to get by.  And too many still aren’t working at all.

Our job is to reverse those trends.  It’s time to restore opportunity for all people – the idea that no matter who you are, if you work hard and live up to your responsibilities, you can make it if you try.

The opportunity agenda I laid out on Tuesday has four parts. This week, I took them on the road.

Job one is more new jobs: jobs in construction and manufacturing, jobs in innovation and energy.

In Wisconsin, I talked with plant workers at GE about part two: training more Americans with the skills to fill those new jobs.

In Tennessee, I talked with students about part three: guaranteeing every child access to a world-class education, from early childhood, through college, and right into a career.

And with steelworkers in Pittsburgh, and retail workers in Maryland, I laid out part four: making sure hard work pays off for men and women, with wages you can live on, savings you can retire on, and health insurance that’s there for you when you need it.

These ideas will strengthen the middle class and help more people work their way into the middle class.  Some of them will require Congress.  But wherever I can take steps to expand opportunity for more families on my own, I will.  I’m going to ask business leaders, education leaders, and philanthropic leaders to partner with us to advance these goals.

And every single day, I’m going to fight for these priorities – to shift the odds back in favor of more working and middle-class Americans, and to keep America a place where you can always make it if you try.

Thanks.  Have a great weekend.  And enjoy the Super Bowl.

Bolding added.

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Bonus Video: President Obama Welcomes the Lunar New Year and Discusses Immigration Reform

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Editor’s Note: The President’s Weekly Address diary is also the weekend open news thread. Feel free to leave links to other news items in the comment threads.


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9 comments

  1. JanF

    New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand Is Giving A New Voice To Working Women

    … in late September – as Washington was bracing for the shutdown, which Gillibrand called a “Tea Party tantrum” – the senator rolled out her most ambitious effort to date: a handful of economic proposals called the Opportunity Plan. Her focus? The nation’s working women.

    Gillibrand’s brainchild, including bills she wrote and those put forth by colleagues, would raise the minimum wage; ease access to quality, affordable child care; provide universal pre-K; create a trust fund supported by employees and employers to give workers paid family medical leave; and ensure equal pay for equal work. It is an ambitious plan – and one that is sure to meet opposition in this hyperpolarized era.

    As Gillibrand sees it, however, every one of the proposals is a sorely needed revamp of workplace policies established back when husbands went off to work and wives stayed home with the kids.

    Good for her to have the courage to put this agenda forward even when she knows that it will probably be opposed vociferously by her Republican colleagues.

    While the agenda touts itself as “five simple solutions,” its consequences – new taxes and expanding entitlements – also seem tailor-made to push the buttons of the GOP. But the aggressively optimistic Gillibrand refuses to let the political landscape fluster her.

    She also has a PAC called “Off the Sidelines” to encourage women to run for office:

    … it was the 2010 election that sparked her women-focused economic package. When the midterms led to the first decline in the percentage of female congress members in three decades, “it was really a smack in the face,” she recalls. “It was the greatest sign that we were going in the wrong direction, that we weren’t constantly evolving and moving women up the ladder.”

    Thus was born not just Gillibrand’s policy blueprint but also a related PAC, Off the Sidelines, through which she raised more than $1 million for women candidates last cycle (and has a goal of twice that this cycle). She sees it as a rallying point for women to demand more from their elected leaders and a way to expand the national discussion of “women’s issues” well beyond reproductive rights.

    Women’s issues, of course, include the economy. With millions of families dependent on two incomes to survive or struggling to make ends meet in a single mother household, minimum wage laws and family leave protections are just as important as the right to plan the size of your family.

  2. JanF

    The movement to force the Washington NFL team to change its name is gaining some momentum.

    A good rundown on the efforts, including how the trademark case may be the final blow to team owner Dan Snyder’s “NEVER” stand is here: The Epic Battle To Save The Most Offensive Team Name In Professional Sports.

    Snyder has now hired a team of PR specialists (famous Republican liars … are you surprised?) to advise him on how to tamp down the controversy.

    This ad is one that was created by NCAI ( National Congress of American Indians) for Super Bowl weekend:

    From ThinkProgress:

    It’s a gorgeous ad, and it’s a strikingly effective illustration of why the word “Redskin” is so troublesome. It’s not just that the term has evolved from its origins as a basic explanation of physical difference, to a slur that was used to reduce Native Americans to the value of their skins, for which literal bounties were offered. In a less violent but no less significant sense, “Redskin” collapses the remarkable particularity of Native American experiences into a single identity and set of attributes.

    The NCAI ad is a forceful and often beautiful reminder that Native Americans aren’t a monolithic community. That’s a term that subsumes hundreds of specific identities, a huge range of cultural and artistic practices-and yes, as the ad doesn’t neglect to leave out-specific sets of social and political issues.

    The NCAI website for this project is ChangeTheMascot.org.

  3. JanF

    The Bone-Chilling, Heart-Wrenching Process Of Counting The Nation’s Homeless

    “Are you okay under there?” Catherine asked the pile of blankets tucked away in a building alcove on the corner of 23rd and I St. NW in Washington, D.C. It was the type of spot where most pedestrians wouldn’t even know a homeless person was there.

    He didn’t move. She asked again. No answer. She repeated a third time. Nothing.

    The three of us held our breath, looking to her for some simple explanation why this wasn’t what it seemed. Maybe he was ignoring us. After all, we were uninvited guests to his makeshift home in the middle of the night.

    Maybe he had some secret way of handling five-degree temperatures, even when others might freeze to death. There are plenty of reasons why he could survive. He had a sleeping bag, a wool blanket or two, and surely – hopefully? – some warm clothes to bundle up in as well. He’d set up a few plywood boards to shield against the wind. He slept on a wooden pallet, keeping him off the freezing ground.

    But there’s one inescapable fact: In the most powerful city in the richest country in the world, this man had to sleep outside on a frigid night. And if he made it through that night, chances are he’ll be sleeping there again the next.

    What are these folks doing?

    This month, cities and regions across the country are conducting an annual homeless survey, known as the Point-in-Time (PIT) count. The survey, organized by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), aims to get a snapshot of our nation’s homeless population and gather data about their lives. How long have they been homeless? Are they veterans? Any medical conditions, including addiction? What are their primary reasons for being homeless?

    Last year, for instance, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) compiled all the PIT counts and found that 610,042 people were homeless in the United States on a given January night, a third of whom had no shelter at all.

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