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Weekly Address: President Obama – Opportunity Agenda vs Republican Budget

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The President’s Weekly Address post is also the Weekend Open News Thread. Feel free to share other news stories in the comments.

 

From the White House –

In this week’s address, the President highlighted the important differences between the budget he’s put forward – built on opportunity for all – and the budget House Republicans are advocating for, which stacks the deck against the middle class.

While the President is focused on building lasting economic security and ensuring that hard-working Americans have the opportunity to get ahead, Republicans are advancing the same old top-down approach of cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans and slashing important investments in education, infrastructure, and research and development.

Transcript: Weekly Address: The President’s Budget Ensures Opportunity for All Hard-Working Americans

Hi, everybody.

Today, our economy is growing and our businesses are consistently generating new jobs.  But decades-long trends still threaten the middle class.  While those at the top are doing better than ever, too many Americans are working harder than ever, but feel like they can’t get ahead.

That’s why the budget I sent Congress earlier this year is built on the idea of opportunity for all.  It will grow the middle class and shrink the deficits we’ve already cut in half since I took office.

It’s an opportunity agenda with four goals. Number one is creating more good jobs that pay good wages. Number two is training more Americans with the skills to fill those jobs. Number three is guaranteeing every child access to a great education.  And number four is making work pay – with wages you can live on, savings you can retire on, and health care that’s there for you when you need it.

This week, the Republicans in Congress put forward a very different budget.  And it does just the opposite: it shrinks opportunity and makes it harder for Americans who work hard to get ahead.

The Republican budget begins by handing out massive tax cuts to households making more than $1 million a year.  Then, to keep from blowing a hole in the deficit, they’d have to raise taxes on middle-class families with kids.  Next, their budget forces deep cuts to investments that help our economy create jobs, like education and scientific research.

Now, they won’t tell you where these cuts will fall.  But compared to my budget, if they cut everything evenly, then within a few years, about 170,000 kids will be cut from early education programs.  About 200,000 new mothers and kids will be cut off from programs to help them get healthy food.  Schools across the country will lose funding that supports 21,000 special education teachers.  And if they want to make smaller cuts to one of these areas, that means larger cuts in others.

Unsurprisingly, the Republican budget also tries to repeal the Affordable Care Act – even though that would take away health coverage from the more than seven million Americans who’ve done the responsible thing and signed up to buy health insurance.  And for good measure, their budget guts the rules we put in place to protect the middle class from another financial crisis like the one we’ve had to fight so hard to recover from.

Policies that benefit a fortunate few while making it harder for working Americans to succeed are not what we need right now.  Our economy doesn’t grow best from the top-down; it grows best from the middle-out.  That’s what my opportunity agenda does – and it’s what I’ll keep fighting for.  Thanks.  And have a great weekend.

Bolding added.

~


Categories: Uncategorized.

/ 13 Comments

13 comments

  1. JanF

    Paul Ryan Accidentally Reveals The Truth About The GOP’s Obamacare Replacement

    House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) admitted on Friday that Republicans would not be able to preserve the most popular elements of Obamacare if they repeal the law as a whole. […]

    “If you look at these kinds of reforms, where they’ve been tried before – say the state of Kentucky, for example – you basically make it impossible to underwrite insurance,” Ryan told Bloomberg’s Al Hunt when asked if Republicans would maintain the pre-existing conditions regulations, dependent coverage extension, and other rate requirements. “You dramatically crank up the cost. And you make it hard for people to get affordable health care,” Ryan insisted.

    Too hard to underwrite? What about the insurance companies tripping over each other to offer policies in the exchanges? What about CEOs delighting shareholders with higher profits from having more customers? What about REALITY?

    Charlie Pierce

    He really doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He hasn’t had to live in the real world away from the government trough for 10 minutes since he entered high school. Biggest fake in American politics.

  2. JanF

    How Republicans Rationalize Voter Suppression: “The GOP’s claims of defending “voter integrity,” “fairness,” and “uniformity” are complete nonsense.”

    Voting rights advocates have attacked these laws as blatant attempts to suppress the votes of low-income and minority voters, but Republicans defend their actions as justified to protect “voter integrity” and ensure “fairness” and “uniformity” in the system.

    One-term Governor Scott Walker (R-WI) just signed a law to eliminate weekend hours for early voting and restrict it to 45 hours during the work week:

    “Every city on election day has voting from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. The idea that some communities should have weekend or night voting is obviously unfair,” [State Senator Glenn Grothman (R-West Bend)] said. “It’s a matter of uniformity. I don’t know what all the hoopla is over,” he told Reuters.

    The fact that some communities have a greater demand for voting than others reduces Grothman’s logic to obvious nonsense. To wit, under the constraints established by the new law, voters in the cities and large suburbs of Wisconsin are at a disadvantage compared to their rural counterparts. For example, Republicans have limited total early voting time to 45 hours during the week. In order to accommodate the number of early voters in 2012 under that time limit, explained Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, you’d have to have a voter cast a ballot every nine seconds. Areas with fewer voters, of course, would have an easier time.

    The Republicans in their various incarnations have never liked making it easy for People Not Like Them to vote:

    It should be said that none of this is new. Most Americans are familiar with race-based voter suppression-the poll taxes, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses of Jim Crow-but those are part of a larger history of partisan voter suppression that stretches back to the early 19th century. After a flood of Irish immigrants tipped the electoral scales and threatened Whig electoral prospects in New York, observes Alexander Keyssar in his book The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States, Whig lawmakers rushed to pass tough new registration rules for New York City, which contained the largest concentration of Irish voters. What’s more, in states like Missouri, Maryland, and Indiana, Know-Nothing and Whig lawmakers sought to delay voting rights for naturalized citizens, fearing the political consequences of large-scale immigrant enfranchisement.

    The franchise is our most important right and it is under serious assault by the teapartiers. We need federal laws for federal elections … laws that expand the franchise, not shrink it … and we need a Democratic Congress to do that.

  3. JanF

    Life Without Jobless Benefits: Watching, Searching And Praying

    Every day Maisano, 60, goes to her computer and applies for jobs. She lives in St. Clair Shores, Mich., and worked as a secretary in the auto industry from the time she graduated high school until 2008.

    Since then, she’s been on and off unemployment and even went through a federal retraining program, only to discover she didn’t have enough experience to land a job in the field she studied. Maisano says since her $179 weekly unemployment checks stopped coming, she and her husband have fallen behind on their mortgage. She’s signed up for food stamps.

    The Republicans won’t extend the program.

    “Extending this program multiple times, which has been 12 times, it’s twice the amount of spending on all the previous programs, so clearly just spending on this program doesn’t move the needle,” says Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee.

    “Obviously we’ve sent her checks. She’s on her second round of unemployment,” say Camp. “That hasn’t worked for her. We need actually policies that will create jobs.”

    Rep. Camp’s Republican Congress has found time to vote to repeal the ACA 52 times but can’t find time to pass a single jobs bill. And while they dither, people like the Maisanos lose their homes. 🙁

  4. JanF

    The Republican Budget Casts a Dark Shadow Over the American Dream

    This dog-eat-dog budget is nothing short of an assault on Americans struggling to stay afloat economically. It reveals that Republican’s post-election talk about seriously addressing poverty issues was just that — talk. During the last election, Governor Romney stated that he wasn’t focused on the 47 percent of struggling Americans, and this Republican budget sets out to prove it. It absolutely decimates safety net programs designed to stop people from falling into deep poverty. It is premised on the false and pernicious notion that helping struggling families saps their will to work. This is apparently the Republican plan — take away food and nutrition support and jobs will sprout up; give children dignity by taking away school lunch programs; slash Medicaid because poor people are just lolling around in Medicaid hammocks. Faith groups have criticized past Republican budgets as failing to meet basic moral standards. This budget is the worst yet.

    Rep. Van Hollen reminds us that we do not have to settle for the pessimistic GOP vision:

    Elections are about the future. Republicans may be obsessed with fighting the battles of the past, but the American people are not. They want Congress to focus on jobs, the economy, and building a stronger future for themselves and their children. That’s why the new Republican budget is timely — it shows what the future holds if Republicans get their way, and is a deeply pessimistic vision of America.

  5. JanF

    BridgeGate Hits Next Level As Feds Launch Grand Jury Investigation

    Federal prosecutors in New Jersey have convened a grand jury to investigate the George Washington Bridge lane closures, ABC News reported on Friday.

    Twenty-three grand jurors on Friday heard testimony from Michael Drewniak, press secretary to Gov. Chris Christie (R). Drewniak’s attorney, Anthony Iacullo, told ABC News his client was not a target of the investigation. […]

    In January, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Jersey confirmed that it was looking into the lane closures, which caused a multi-day traffic jam in Fort Lee, N.J. in September. But as ABC News reports, the existence of the grand jury confirms that the matter has evolved into a criminal investigation.

  6. JanF

    Remember When Republicans Said Social Security And Medicare Would Destroy Freedom Too?

    The intense conservative ire for Obamacare may seem like an anomaly in American history. But it’s eerily reminiscent of two other large — and now widely popular — expansions of the safety net: Social Security and Medicare.

    The two programs are now a staple of American political culture. But a backward glance at the political environment during their inception reveals equally fierce, ugly antipathy from conservatives — including screaming warnings that they’d be ruinous to freedom.

    Social Security:

    During the 1935 debate over Social Security, Republicans likened it to slavery and dictatorship.

    “Never in the history of the world has any measure been brought here so insidiously designed as to prevent business recovery, to enslave workers and to prevent any possibility of the employers providing work for the people,” said Rep. John Taber (R-NY).

    Yup, Americans never worked after 1935. Sigh.

    Medicare:

    Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater, in 1964, likened Medicare to free vacations and beer. “Having given our pensioners their medical care in kind,” he said, “why not food baskets, why not public housing accommodations, why not vacation resorts, why not a ration of cigarettes for those who smoke and of beer for those who drink?”

    I have often wondered if they would really prefer old dead people in the streets. Or maybe they hope we would just go die someplace where they can’t see us, perhaps at our government-subsidized vacation resorts?

    Historical revisionism:

    Half a century later, Republicans loudly and proudly proclaim their support for both programs*, and are loathe to admit their party ever opposed them.

    But history repeats itself. In 2010, Democrats passed the Affordable Care Act — the largest expansion of the safety net since Medicare — following a similarly intense debate. Democrats heralded it as a step toward a more humane society, and Republican opponents warned it would pose a grave threat to economic freedom.

    *Except Paul Freakin’ Ryan

    THIS!

    “In politics, losses always worry people more than abstract future gains entice them. Now, every vote to repeal or eviscerate Obamacare risks offending millions – and the potential to arouse pushback will only grow,” argued Theda Skocpol, a Harvard professor, sociologist and liberal author. “This story isn’t like Social Security, where most potential beneficiaries saw few gains for two decades. Affordable Care is already a massive presence in U.S. health care. It cannot be rolled back and those who keep championing that Lost Cause will do so at rising political peril.”

    Please proceed, GOP. Please proceed.

  7. JanF

    Obama Outpaces Bush In Confirming Judges

    As of Friday, Obama has placed 44 new judges on circuit courts and 191 on district courts. At the same time in Bush’s presidency, on April 4, 2006, he had confirmed 43 circuit judges and 189 district court judges.

    On Monday, the Democratic-led Senate confirmed John Owens to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, making him Obama’s 44th circuit judge. Notably, he didn’t clear the 60-vote threshold that was required to defeat a filibuster before Democrats scrapped that requirement for non-Supreme Court nominations in November.

    There are still 85 judicial vacancies and 46 that are on the Senate floor awaiting confirmation. Should we lose the Senate, those vacancies will likely go unfilled because the GOP will want to grind the Obama Administration to a halt. Another reason to keep up the heat on GOTV this fall.  

  8. JanF

    Michael Kinsley: WaPo

    The power of money in politics, in other words, is only as large as we allow it to be. What we need are a few more campaigns where the amount an opponent is spending becomes an issue itself. We need a political culture where a politician will have to make a calculation before accepting a contribution from Rich Plutocrats for America: Will the number of votes I gain by having more money to spend on obnoxious TV commercials be bigger or smaller than the number I will lose because people are offended by Rich Plutocrats for America (and those obnoxious TV commercials)?

    The solution when you don’t like someone’s speech is not to silence that person, or that corporation. It’s more and louder speech of your own.

    Of course, this does not answer the simple question: how do you get out the word that Rich Plutocrats are funding your opponent if you have no money to pay for ads? Perhaps this strategy, coupled with a free and honest press who would be required to report who is paying for campaigns, would be the way to go. But I will not hold my breath for “free and honest press”.

  9. JanF

    A lot of pixels have been spent discussing the metaversy about the resignation of the Mozilla CEO who was found to have supported Prop 8 in California, the referendum that sought to invalidate the marriages of 18,000 Californians, a referendum later found to be unconstitutional.

    Brendan Eich, as a private citizen, made a contribution to the anti-LGBT group supporting that referendum. A few weeks ago he was named CEO of the tech company he had co-founded. The outcry from the pro-LGBT community and their supporters, which includes a lot of tech workers, led to boycotts and his eventual resignation.

    Some on the right, and Andrew Sullivan who careens between right and left, have decried this as crushing dissent and free speech and kicking puppies. Wait, not that last one because the right-wing actually thinks that kicking puppies is good.

    Here are a couple of pieces discussing the meta.

    Josh Marshall TPM:

    I doubt there’s any other industry or subculture (that is big time in economic terms) that has more advanced views on LGBT issues than tech. What’s more, Mozilla is a nonprofit – essentially an activist organization – built around open-source-ism and the distribution of information. Its values are at the core of its existence, not profit like a for-profit corporation.

    But even if it weren’t a nonprofit, being a CEO is different. You represent the company. To a degree, you are the company. And there’s little doubt that having an apparently anti-gay rights CEO would be a bad thing for a tech company in terms of its market as well as in terms of the competition for programmers and engineers and more. I think most of us do or should agree that as a matter of political culture, if not strict political rights, you should be able to do your job and fulfill your responsibilities and not worry about being punished or fired because you have heterodox political views. But being a CEO or having other super prominent positions is a bit like being a celebrity or rock star.

    Michelangelo Signorile HuffPo


    Andrew Sullivan has come to the defense of the Mozilla CEO, Brendan Eich, writing that Eich is being treated as a “heretic,” a victim of “left-liberal intolerance” and the “ugly intolerance of parts of the gay movement,” forced to resign in the wake of stinging criticism of his financial contribution to the passage of Proposition 8 in California in 2008.

    According to Sullivan, the gay mafia has struck again, destroying a man and bringing him down because he would not conform to its thinking. […]

    None of this is about government censorship. It’s about a company based in Northern California that has many progressive employees, as well as a lot of progressives and young people among the user base of its Firefox browser, realizing its CEO’s worldview is completely out of touch with the company’s — and America’s — values and vision for the future.

    There is nothing wrong with boycotting a company whose policies or management you disagree with. If it offends Andrew Sullivan that people with blogs use them to push back against bigotry, he needs to stop and assess what he is using his blog for. He disagrees and feels that Eich was hounded out of his position for his personal opinions. Actually, he was outed as having personal opinions that are offensive to his customers, opinions that he has not denounced and which led others to want to disassociate from the company he was running. Free market … voting with our dollars.

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