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Weekly Address: President Obama – A Path Towards a Thriving Middle-Class

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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 described the progress our economy has made, laying a foundation for a future that prioritizes middle-class economics.

This week, the President will send a budget to Congress centered on the idea that everyone who works hard should have the chance to get ahead. His plan will reverse harmful sequestration cuts and instead make paychecks go further, create good jobs here in the United States, and prepare hardworking Americans to earn higher wages. The President made the case for his budget, and affirmed his commitment to doing everything he can to ensure more Americans can get ahead in this new economy.

(In Spanish, from Juan Gonzalez, asesor del Vicepresidente para asuntos del Hemisferio Occidental, more at  WhiteHouse.gov/Espanol)

Transcript: Weekly Address: A Path Towards a Thriving Middle Class

Hi, everybody.  At a moment when our economy is growing, our businesses are creating jobs at the fastest pace since the 1990s, and wages are starting to rise again, we have to make some choices about the kind of country we want to be.

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 has a chance to get ahead?

That was the focus of my State of the Union Address – middle-class economics.  The idea that this country does best when everyone gets their fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.

This week, I will send a budget to Congress that’s built on those values.

We’ll help working families’ paychecks go farther by treating things like paid leave and child care like the economic priorities that they are.  We’ll offer Americans of every age the chance to upgrade their skills so they can earn higher wages, with plans like making two years of community college free for every responsible student.  And we’ll keep building the world’s most attractive economy for high-wage jobs, with new investments in research, infrastructure, manufacturing, and expanded access to faster internet and new markets.

We can afford to make these investments. Since I took office, we’ve cut our deficits by about two-thirds – the fastest sustained deficit reduction since just after the end of World War II.  We just have to be smarter about how we pay for our priorities, and that’s what my budget does.  It proposes getting rid of special interest loopholes in our tax code, and using those savings to cut taxes for middle-class families and reward businesses that invest in America.  It refuses to play politics with our homeland security, and funds our national security priorities at home and abroad.  And it undoes the arbitrary, across-the-board budget cuts known as “the sequester” for our domestic priorities, and matches those investments dollar-for-dollar in resources our troops need to get the job done.

Now, I know that there are Republicans in Congress who disagree with my approach.  And like I said in my State of the Union Address, if they have ideas that will help middle-class families feel some economic security, I’m all in to work with them.  But I will keep doing everything I can to help more working families make ends meet and get ahead.  Not just because we want everyone to share in America’s success – but because we want everyone to contribute to America’s success.



That’s the way the middle class thrived in the last century – and that’s how it will thrive again.

Thanks, and have a great weekend.

Bolding added.

~


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/ 3 Comments

3 comments

  1. JanF

    No surprise there. It is also very popular, again no surprise.

    The Republicans will have to run on their party platform of 1%er economics and no help for middle income Americans.

  2. JanF

    A Walk Down Memory Lane on Washington’s Dysfunction

    For some of us its pretty galling to hear Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell suggest that the way to end dysfunction in Washington is for President Obama to move to the “middle,” or to have to listen to a Republican presidential candidate opine about the lack of “adult conversations” in D.C.

    She provides a timeline of intransigence, starting with William “Bloody” Kristol in 1993, regarding Bill Clinton:

    Any Republican urge to negotiate a “least bad” compromise with the Democrats, and thereby gain momentary public credit for helping the president “do something” about health care, should also be resisted.

    Pausing for this wonderful remark by Grover Norquist in 2003: “We will make it so that a Democrat cannot govern as a Democrat.”

    And ending with this from 2011, from Mike Lofgren, Republican staffer:

       A couple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption. Should Republicans succeed in obstructing the Senate from doing its job, it would further lower Congress’s generic favorability rating among the American people. By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner.

    Is it any surprise that there has been no meaningful compromise … and that any sane person would be hesitant to engage the Republican Party in any sort of conversation about the role of government?

  3. JanF

    Smartypants has a nice summary of the news stories on the Republicans realizing that they might have to actually do something. From one of the articles:


       GOP congressional leaders haven’t coalesced around a specific replacement for the law should the court strike down the subsidies. Democrats say that makes them vulnerable, and plan to paint the GOP as responsible for taking away benefits that millions already receive.

       “What you’re going to see is the Republican party with all their clothes off,” said Rep. Jim McDermott (D., Wash.) “They are standing out there naked as a jaybird and they are going to have to stand up and explain, ‘Well, now we got rid of it – now what do we do?'”

    GET ME THE EYE BLEACH!!!

    Actually, the loss of the premium subsidies won’t kill the ACA. It will simply kick 11 million people off insurance in the states that took the position that creating a state exchange would be socialism. Those states are states controlled by Republicans and they will own the havoc created by a negative court decision. In the states that built their own exchanges, life (literally!) goes on. In states that took MEDICAID the poor will still have coverage.  

    So another fix would be for those states to build an exchange (it is possible that they can simply set up a portal to the federal exchange … it depends on how the court rules). There will be enormous pressure on them from the hospitals and providers who were finally getting compensated for the free care that they had to give under federal statutes. No one will want to go back.

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