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Weekly Address: President Obama – Everyone who works hard should get ahead

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

 

From the White House – Weekly Address

In this week’s address, President Obama highlighted the progress our economy has made, with more than 3.1 million jobs created in 2014 – the best year for job growth since the late 1990s. America has come a long way, and with the right policies, we can continue to grow our economy into one where those who work hard can get ahead.

That’s why earlier this week the President released a budget proposal focused on middle-class economics – the idea that this country does best when everyone gets their fair shot, does their fair share, and plays by the same set of rules. The President said he looks forward to working with anyone, Republican or Democrat, who is willing to fight for commonsense policies that will help the middle class succeed.

Transcript: Weekly Address: Everyone Who Works Hard Should Get Ahead

Hi everybody. I’m talking with you today from Ivy Tech Community College in Indianapolis, where I just held a town hall and heard from everyday Americans about what we can do, together, to make their lives a little better.

This week, we got news that confirms what we already know — that our businesses continue to create jobs for hardworking folks all across the country. Last month, America’s businesses added another 267,000 jobs. In 2014, our economy created more than 3.1 million jobs in all — the best year for job growth since the late 1990s. All told, over the past 59 months, the private sector has added 11.8 million new jobs-the longest streak on record. And in the single most hopeful sign for middle class families, wages are rising again.

America is poised for another good year – as long as Washington works to keep this progress going. We have to choose — will we accept an economy where only a few of us do spectacularly well, or will we build an economy where everyone who works hard can get ahead?

Because while we’ve come a long way, we’ve got more work to do to make sure that our recovery reaches more Americans, not just those at the top. That’s what middle-class economics is all about — the idea that this country does best when everyone gets their fair shot, does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.

This week, I sent Congress a budget built on middle-class economics. It helps families afford childcare, health care, college, paid leave at work, homeownership, and saving for retirement, and it could put thousands of dollars back into the pockets of a working family each year. It helps more Americans learn new skills to earn higher wages, including by making two years of community college free for responsible students all across the country. It invests in the research and infrastructure our businesses need to compete and create high-paying jobs. And it pays for this with smart spending cuts and by fixing a tax code that’s riddled with special-interest loopholes for folks who don’t need them, allowing us to offer tax breaks to students and families who do need them.

I believe this is where we need to go to give working families more security in a time of constant economic change. And I’ll work with anyone-Republican or Democrat-who wants to get to “yes” on these issues. We won’t agree on everything, and that’s natural — but we should stop refighting old battles, and start working together to help you succeed in the new economy.

That’s what you elected us to do — not to turn everything into another Washington food fight, but to have debates that are worthy of this country, and to build an economy not just where everyone can share in America’s success, but where everyone can contribute to America’s success.

Thanks, and have a great weekend.

Bolding added.

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3 comments

  2. JanF

    The president spoke at the national prayer breakfast and started a national dialog about how attributing violence to a religion instead of the people committing the acts of violence misses the point:

    The degree to which, in retrospect, we are willing to condemn violent perversions of faith often has to do with their proximity to us. Most will now admit, however grudgingly, that the Crusades and Inquisition were efforts to carry out some construal of God’s will, however mistaken and otherwise motivated. With more recent conflicts, such as Bosnia and Rwanda, we are more apt to see Christianity as a single thread in a web of ethnic and political tensions that was ultimately only one cause among the many that ultimately culminated in brutality. And this analysis is probably right.

    But it is also probably true of the terrorism perpetrated by ISIS, which has been roundly denounced as contrary to the principles of Islam by a host of Muslim leaders and clerics, most recently after the murder of Jordanian pilot Moaz al-Kasasbeh. Like war crimes and individual acts of brutality committed within the Christian world, the pattern of tensions that has produced ISIS, in all its unthinkable cruelty, seems to be broader and deeper than its self-proclaimed religious convictions.For those not searching for a source of personal offense, this is the only point Obama’s remarks on the religious violence enacted by Christians really conveys.

  3. JanF

    Gallup Poll

    “These increasingly partisan views of presidents may have as much to do with the environment in which these presidents have governed as with their policies, given 24-hour news coverage of what they do and increasingly partisan news and opinion sources on television, in print and online,” the polling organization says.

    In his sixth year in office, 79 percent of Democrats approve of Obama’s performance, while just 9 percent of Republicans do. George W. Bush’s numbers were exactly reversed in year six of his presidency (79 percent of Republicans approval vs. 9 percent for Democrats).

    Well, certainly there are not many “independent news organizations” so we have to get our news from right leaning or left leaning news sites. But there is also Reality. I would contend that George W. Bush, in Reality, crashed the global economy while protecting his have-mores from pesky regulations and taxes and got us into wars of choice. And that Barack Obama, in Reality, helped get us out of the messes that Bush got us into including setting the economy on the path to recovery.

    Republicans hate President Obama for reasons other than his job performance.

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