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Weekly Address: President Obama – America Is a Place Where Hard Work Should Be Rewarded

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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, the President made the case for why it’s past time to raise the minimum wage. Increasing the national minimum wage to $10.10 an hour would benefit 28 million Americans, and make our economy stronger. While Republicans in Congress have blocked this commonsense proposal, a large and growing coalition of state and local leaders and owners of businesses large and small have answered the President’s call and raised wages for their residents and employees.

This progress is important, but there is more that can be done. No American who works full time should have to raise a family in poverty. That’s why the President will continue to push Congress to take action and give America its well-deserved raise.

Transcript: Weekly Address: America Is a Place Where Hard Work Should Be Rewarded

Hi, everybody.  For the first time in more than 6 years, the unemployment rate is below 6%.  Over the past four and a half years, our businesses have created more than 10 million new jobs.  That’s the longest uninterrupted stretch of private sector job creation in our history.

But while our businesses are creating jobs at the fastest pace since the ’90s, the typical family hasn’t seen a raise since the ’90s also.  Folks are feeling as squeezed as ever.  That’s why I’m going to keep pushing policies that will create more jobs faster and raise wages faster – policies like rebuilding our infrastructure, making sure women are paid fairly, and making it easier for young people to pay off their student loans.

But one of the simplest and fastest ways to start helping folks get ahead is by raising the minimum wage.

Ask yourself: could you live on $14,500 a year?  That’s what someone working full-time on the minimum wage makes.  If they’re raising kids, that’s below the poverty line.  And that’s not right.  A hard day’s work deserves a fair day’s pay.

Right now, a worker on the federal minimum wage earns $7.25 an hour.  It’s time to raise that to $10.10 an hour.

Raising the federal minimum wage to ten dollars and ten cents an hour, or ten-ten, would benefit 28 million American workers.  28 million.  And these aren’t just high schoolers on their first job.  The average worker who would benefit is 35 years old. Most low-wage workers are women.  And that extra money would help them pay the bills and provide for their families.  It also means they’ll have more money to spend at local businesses – which grows the economy for everyone.

But Congress hasn’t voted to raise the minimum wage in seven years.  Seven years.  And when it got a vote earlier this year, Republicans flat-out voted “no.”  That’s why, since the first time I asked Congress to give America a raise, 13 states, 21 cities and D.C. have gone around Congress to raise their workers’ wages.  Five more states have minimum wage initiatives on the ballot next month.  More companies are choosing to raise their workers’ wages.  A recent survey shows that a majority of small business owners support a gradual increase to ten-ten an hour, too.  And I’ve done what I can on my own by requiring federal contractors to pay their workers at least ten-ten an hour.

On Friday, a coalition of citizens – including business leaders, working moms, labor unions, and more than 65 mayors – told Republicans in Congress to stop blocking a raise for millions of hard-working Americans. Because we believe that in America, nobody who works full-time should ever have to raise a family in poverty.  And I’m going to keep up this fight until we win.  Because America deserves a raise right now.  And America should forever be a place where your hard work is rewarded.

Thanks, and have a great weekend.

Bolding added.

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Categories: Uncategorized.

/ 6 Comments

6 comments

  2. JanF

    Transcript (selected quotes):

    … 150 years ago, President Lincoln signed a law that forever changed the way we conserve our natural heritage.  It might have seemed like an odd thing to do at the time.  Civil war raged between North and South; the fate of our union hung in the balance.  Lincoln himself had never even been to California.   For a good part of his life, his home state of Illinois was considered the West.

    But descriptions and drawings, and even some early photographs of the Yosemite Valley, had made their way back East — the cathedral peaks, the waterfalls, the giant sequoias.  So too had stories about encroaching development that threatened the area.  So President Lincoln decided to help protect a place he had never visited — for a nation he might not be able to save and for a future he would never live to see.  And that place is at the heart of what now is Yosemite National Park.

    So it’s fitting that we meet here in California, because this was the state that inspired Lincoln’s actions, and made possible all that followed, including this moment.  Today, I’m using my executive authority to designate the San Gabriel Mountains as a national monument.  (Applause.)  

    This incredible 346,000 acres of rugged slopes and remote canyons are home to an extraordinary diversity of wildlife.  The rare Arroyo Chub swims through the cool streams, while the California condor soars above the vistas.  You can hike through the chaparral, amid wild lilacs and mountain mahogany.  Maybe you can swat away some rare native insects.  (Laughter.)

    But it’s not just the natural beauty of the San Gabriels that makes it invaluable.  Within these hills lies millennia of history, including the ancient rock art of Native peoples — the first Americans.  And just as this region teaches us about our past, it has always offered us a window into the future.  It was here at the Mount Wilson Observatory that Edwin P. Hubble showed the universe to be ever-expanding, and it’s where astronomers still explore the mysteries of space.

    Over 15 million people live within 90 minutes of the San Gabriel Mountains.  These mountains provide residents with roughly 30 percent of their water and 70 percent of their open space.  This whole area is a huge boost to the local economy.

    As President, I’ve now preserved more than 3 million acres of public lands for future generations.  (Applause.)  And I’m not finished.  (Applause.)

  3. princesspat

    Microsoft CEO Nadella’s ‘wrong’ comments about women expose important truths

    Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s misguided advice to women might be “wrong,” but his comments were right on about the challenges women face in the workplace.

    Reactions to Nadella’s suggestion that women should trust the “system” and allow karma to usher in a better raise quickly dismissed him as completely off-base.  Nadella himself apologized and called the comments “wrong” within hours. Some people question how a powerful CEO with an army of handlers could have made that type of mistake in public as if he’d never considered the question before.

  4. JanF

    The EEOC is on the job:

    This past week, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charged Daimler Trucks North America with illegally firing April Holt the day after she complained about sexual harassment.[…]

    The EEOC’s suit came just weeks after it charged Dollar General with a similar action. It says that Laveta Crawford was “subjected to a barrage of lewd comments and gestures” by a male assistant store manager on a daily basis. The harassment continued even after she complained, but after she filed a discrimination charge with the EEOC, she was fired within a week.

    Sexual harassment on the job, while illegal, is still very common, particularly for women. There were 7,256 EEOC charges in 2013, and there were over 11,000 in 2011 when EEOC charges were combined with those made at state and local Fair Employment Practices agencies.

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