Motley Moose – Archive

Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

Weekly Address: President Obama – Middle Class Economics

Tags:

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 shared his plan, outlined in his State of the Union address earlier this week, to give hardworking families the support they need to make ends meet by focusing on policies that benefit the middle class and those working to reach the middle class.

Through common-sense proposals like closing loopholes that benefit the wealthy and providing tax relief to the middle class, making two years of community college free for responsible students, strengthening paid leave policies and access to quality child care for working families, and raising the minimum wage, we can ensure that everyone benefits from, and contributes to, America’s success.

Middle-class economics is working, and we have laid a new foundation, but there is still progress to be made, and the President said he is eager to get to work.

/center>

Transcript: Weekly Address: Middle-Class Economics

Hi, everybody.  This week, in my State of the Union Address, I talked about what we can do to make sure middle-class economics helps more Americans get ahead in the new economy.

See, after some tough years, and thanks to some tough decisions we made, our economy is creating jobs at the fastest pace since 1999.  Our deficits are shrinking.  Our energy production is booming.  Our troops are coming home.  Thanks to the hard work and resilience of Americans like you, we’ve risen from recession freer to write our own future than any other nation on Earth.

Now we have to choose what we want that future to look like.  Will we accept an economy where only a few of us do spectacularly well?  Or will we commit ourselves to an economy that generates rising incomes and rising chances for everyone who makes the effort?

I believe the choice is clear.  Today, thanks to a growing economy, the recovery is touching more and more lives.  Wages are finally starting to rise again.  Let’s keep that going – let’s do more to restore the link between hard work and growing opportunity for every American.

That’s what middle-class economics is – 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.

Middle-class economics means helping workers feel more secure in a world of constant change – making it easier to afford childcare, college, paid leave, health care, a home, and retirement.

Middle-class economics means doing more to help Americans upgrade their skills through opportunities like apprenticeships and two years of free community college, so we can keep earning higher wages down the road.

Middle-class economics means building the most competitive economy in the world, by building the best infrastructure, opening new markets so we can sell our products around the world, and investing in research – so that businesses keep creating good jobs right here.

And we can afford to do these things by closing loopholes in our tax code that stack the decks for special interests and the superrich, and against responsible companies and the middle class.

This is where we have to go if we’re going to succeed in the new economy.  I know that there are Republicans in Congress who disagree with my approach, and I look forward to hearing their ideas for how we can pay for what the middle class needs to grow.  But what we can’t do is simply pretend that things like child care or college aren’t important, or pretend there’s nothing we can do to help middle class families get ahead.



Because we’ve got work to do.  As a country, we have made it through some hard times.  But we’ve laid a new foundation.  We’ve got a new future to write.  And I’m eager to get to work.

Thanks, and have a great weekend.

Bolding added.

~


Categories: Uncategorized.

/ 16 Comments

16 comments

  1. JanF



    He really is a guy comfortable in his own skin. From the transcript:

    THE PRESIDENT: And it’s good to be back in Kansas.  (Applause.)  I’ve got deep roots in Kansas.  (Applause.)  As you know, my mom was born in Wichita.  (Applause.)  Her mom grew up in Augusta.  Her father was from El Dorado.  (Applause.)  So I’m a Kansas guy.  (Applause.)  I’m a Kansas guy.

    Now, that helped me in the caucus here in 2008.  (Applause.) It didn’t help me as much in the general election.  (Laughter.)

    AUDIENCE MEMBER:  We’re sorry!

    THE PRESIDENT:  Coach Self won 10 straight — I lost two straight here.  (Laughter.)  But that’s okay.  Listen, I love you — and I might have won sections of Lawrence.  (Applause.)

    🙂

  2. Diana in NoVa

    The POTUS is perched on a metaphorical river bank, looking at the piranhas madly thrashing around in the river below. He may advocate policies that will help the middle class but what can he do without Congressional approval? He won’t get it, obstructionism being the Rethugs’ primary goal.

    The child care issue is threatening the economy. Women are damned if they go to work to help support the family and damned if they stay at home. But without children, how would the country survive? Who would buy all those houses, cars, and consumer goods in 30 years if it weren’t for future consumers?

    Republican stupidity is a continual source of amazement to me. The deliberate obtuseness of the 1 percent I can understand–they don’t care if we live or die (although, there again, there’s the future consumption issue). The stupidity of people who vote against their own economic self-interest because they’re afraid Democrats are going to take their guns away or force every woman to have an abortion whether she needs one or not staggers me.

  3. Portlaw

    the middle class. When I was growing up, it meant doctors and lawyers, the bourgeoisie, people belonging to country clubs if not the very best ones. I looked it up and am still confused. According to Wiki


    Members of the middle class belong to diverse groups which overlap with each other. Overall, middle-class persons, especially upper-middle-class individuals, are characterized by conceptualizing, creating and consulting. Thus, college education is one of the main indicators of middle-class status. Largely attributed to the nature of middle-class occupations, middle class values tend to emphasize independence, adherence to intrinsic standards, valuing innovation and respecting non-conformity.[2][5] Politically more active than other demographics, college educated middle class professionals are split between the two major parties.[6]

    Income varies considerably from near the national median to well in excess of $100,000.[2][4] Household income figures, however, do not always reflect class status and standard of living, as they are largely influenced by the number of income earners and fail to recognize household size. It is therefore possible for a large, dual-earner, lower middle class household to out-earn a small, one-earner, upper middle class household.[5] The middle classes are very influential, as they encompass the majority of voters, writers, teachers, journalists, and editors.[7] Most societal trends in the US originate within the middle classes.[8]

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A…

    What about the poor and the working and under classes? Don’t they need help? I  definitely think so.  Or are politicians using middle to refer to them for various reasons?

  4. JanF

    Dana Milbank, WaPo: Get used to Obama’s swagger

    … it’s hard to deny Obama a victory lap now that Americans are optimistic about the economy after six years of misery. This isn’t necessarily the result of his policies – but neither were the six years in the doldrums his fault. This president, like all presidents, gets the blame when the economy is weak and the credit when it is strong. […]

    If the economy continues on its current trajectory, as most expect, he’ll leave office a popular president and leave the 2016 Democratic nominee with a relatively easy path to victory. […]

    A president’s approval rating closely tracks consumer confidence, and consumer confidence has begun to explode. The University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index, mired in the 60s, 70s and 80s during Obama’s presidency, soared to 93.6 in December from 88.8 in November. It leaped again to 98.2 in January, its highest level in a decade. […]

    Pew polling expert Andy Kohut said that, if the economy continues on its current trajectory, he expects Obama’s approval rating to rise above 50 percent – and stay there. Kohut thinks the ceiling for Obama’s approval is about 55 percent, because of the polarized electorate and because the lower middle class remains depressed.

    Another indicator: the Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index which favors the party of the incumbent president when it is above 100 where it is expected to be soon. It was 44.9 in 2008.

  5. JanF

    Foe Of ‘Fiscal Waterboarding’ Leads Going Into Greek Election

    More than a quarter of Greeks are unemployed. Four years of austerity, which came in exchange for billions in bailout loans, have crushed the economy. Greeks are now poised to elect Syriza, a leftist party that calls austerity “fiscal waterboarding.”

    “Europe’s austerity experiment has failed,” says Christoforos Vernadakis, a pollster running for Parliament on the Syriza ticket. “And as a result, the old political parties – viewed as tools of this austerity policy – have fallen apart.” […]

    Syriza says Greeks must ask for debt relief, something Germany – the biggest Eurozone lender – has rebuffed.

    But that attitude may change if Syriza wins, especially if another hard-charging anti-austerity party, Podemos, comes to power in Spain (another troubled European economy).

    It will be interesting to watch unfold. For years now, Greece has been used as a warning about the Awful Obama Economy, as in “we will become Greece if you elect a Democrat!!” Well, we did not become Greece because our Democratic president, and the 111th Democratic Congress which put programs in place to dig us out of the recession, did not choose austerity. Do the other Eurozone countries have a plan other than waiting for something to trickle on the Greek economy?

  6. JanF

    Wisconsin’s Dane County has been reviewing a tar sands oil pumping station permit from Enbridge Energy, the people who gifted Michigan with the $1.2 billion oil spill into the Kalamazoo River.

    The county wants Enbridge to provide additional insurance to cover any spills  so that Dane County and Wisconsin taxpayers are not left holding the bag as they were in Michigan. Enbridge is resisting because free enterprise should be free: “Enbridge has said that its $700 million in system-wide insurance is sufficient, along with state and federal cleanup funds“. There you have it, vulture capitalism in a nutshell: privatize profits and socialize costs.

    However, thanks to Washington State, who managed to extract an insurance concession from Enbridge, we may be convincing them to relent:

    Enbridge has maintained that the federal law forbids local pipeline safety regulation. [County Board member and chairman of the zoning committee Patrick] Miles and others have expressed concerns about a costly court battle. But attorneys from the Environmental Law & Policy Center provided the county with a Jan. 9 opinion indicating it was unlikely a court would block a cleanup requirement.

    “Financial requirements are not safety requirements,” the center said. “Such (cleanup) requirements are economic requirements, and well-justified ones in light of Enbridge’s track record of costly spills in the Midwest.”

    Miles said he shares environmentalists’ concerns about high energy consumption and impact on climate change associated with extraction of tar sands crude, but the county doesn’t have authority to deny the permit based on those considerations – or based on worries that the pipeline can’t handle an increase in flow. But he said the county can act to protect residents’ welfare after a spill.

    “That is an area where we do have some latitude in terms of what we can do in the interest of the public,” Miles said.

    Kirkland, Washington, enacted an ordinance in 2011 requiring the Enbridge-owned Olympic line to purchase $100 million in general liability insurance and $50 million for pollution liability. The law is modeled on one enacted in Bellingham in 2001, two years after a 16-inch gasoline pipeline broke, spilling 237,000 gallons, which ignited, killing three teenagers and causing $45 million in property damage.

    The final decision is expected this Tuesday. Will Enbridge blink? If not, I hope that the County Board spends my money to battle them in the courts: it is time to draw the line.

  7. JanF

    GOP protects the one percent

    Romney’s remarks [about the 47%] – and he stood by them immediately after his election defeat – didn’t just damage him; they also sullied the entire Republican Party, reinforcing its image as the lapdog of the very rich. Even now, as some of its strategists push hard for the GOP to reach out to ordinary working folks, its Congressional leaders continue to protect the one percent.

    If President Obama has no hope for passage of his ambitious program of “middle-class economics,” as he called it during last week’s State of the Union speech, at least he has a plan. […]

    Even now, in a resurgent economy, many families haven’t regained their footing. Their savings accounts have evaporated. They can’t replace the house they lost to foreclosure. They work two or three part-time jobs without benefits. And even those with fulltime jobs aren’t raking in the dough. According to The New York Times, the median weekly wage for fulltime workers at the end of 2014 was $796, below the levels in 2009, when the expansion began.

    Those workers are hardly moochers. They are struggling to find their way in a world where their skills have less value. They need help from a government that knows its role is to lend a hand, to steady the ladder, to help them find a toehold.

    One party is poised to help … the other is not.

Comments are closed.