Here is a transcript, from the Economy speech on
Wednesday (7/24/13) at Knox College in Galesburg by President Obama.
THE PRESIDENT: Hello, Galesburg! (Applause.) Well, it’s good
to be home in Illinois! (Applause.) It is good to be back. It’s good
to be back. Thank you. Thank you so much, everybody. (Applause.)
Thank you. Everybody, have a seat, have a seat. Well, it is good to be
back.
I want to, first of all, thank Knox College -- (applause) -- I want
to thank Knox College and your president, Teresa Amott, for having me
here today. Give Teresa a big round of applause. (Applause.) I want
to thank your Congresswoman, Cheri Bustos, who’s here. (Applause.)
We've got Governor Quinn here. (Applause.) I'm told we've got your
Lieutenant Governor, Sheila Simon, is here. (Applause.) There she is.
Attorney General Lisa Madigan is here. (Applause.)
I see a bunch of my former colleagues, some folks who I haven't seen
in years and I'm looking forward to saying hi to. One in particular
I've got to mention, one of my favorites from the Illinois Senate --
John Sullivan is in the house. (Applause.) John was one of my earliest
supporters when I was running for the U.S. Senate, and it came in
really handy because he’s got, like, 10 brothers and sisters, and his
wife has got 10 brothers and sisters -- (laughter) -- so they’ve got
this entire precinct just in their family. (Laughter.) And they all
look like John -- the brothers do -- so he doesn’t have to go to every
event. He can just send one of his brothers out. (Laughter.) It is
good to see him.
Dick Durbin couldn’t make it today, but he sends his best. And we
love Dick. (Applause.) He’s doing a great job. And we’ve got one of
my favorite neighbors, the Senator from Missouri, Claire McCaskill, in
the house, because we’re going to Missouri later this afternoon.
(Applause.)
And all of you are here, and it’s great to see you. (Applause.) And
I hope everybody is having a wonderful summer. The weather is
perfect. Whoever was in charge of that, good job. (Laughter.)
So, eight years ago, I came here to deliver the commencement address
for the class of 2005. Things were a little different back then. For
example, I had no gray hair -- (laughter) -- or a motorcade. Didn’t
even have a prompter. In fact, there was a problem in terms of printing
out the speech because the printer didn’t work here and we had to drive
it in from somewhere. (Laughter.) But it was my first big speech as
your newest senator.
And on the way here I was telling Cheri and Claire about how
important this area was, one of the areas that I spent the most time in
outside of Chicago, and how much it represented what’s best in America
and folks who were willing to work hard and do right by their families.
And I came here to talk about what a changing economy was doing to the
middle class -- and what we, as a country, needed to do to give every
American a chance to get ahead in the 21st century.
See, I had just spent a year traveling the state and listening to
your stories -- of proud Maytag workers losing their jobs when the plant
moved down to Mexico. (Applause.) A lot of folks here remember that.
Of teachers whose salaries weren’t keeping up with the rising cost of
groceries. (Applause.) Of young people who had the drive and the
energy, but not the money to afford a college education. (Applause.)
So these were stories of families who had worked hard, believed in
the American Dream, but they felt like the odds were increasingly
stacked against them. And they were right. Things had changed.
In the period after World War II, a growing middle class was the
engine of our prosperity. Whether you owned a company, or swept its
floors, or worked anywhere in between, this country offered you a basic
bargain -- a sense that your hard work would be rewarded with fair wages
and decent benefits, the chance to buy a home, to save for retirement,
and most of all, a chance to hand down a better life for your kids.
But over time, that engine began to stall -- and a lot of folks here
saw it -- that bargain began to fray. Technology made some jobs
obsolete. Global competition sent a lot of jobs overseas. It became
harder for unions to fight for the middle class. Washington doled out
bigger tax cuts to the very wealthy and smaller minimum wage increases
for the working poor.
And so what happened was that the link between higher productivity
and people’s wages and salaries was broken. It used to be that, as
companies did better, as profits went higher, workers also got a better
deal. And that started changing. So the income of the top 1 percent
nearly quadrupled from 1979 to 2007, but the typical family’s incomes
barely budged.
And towards the end of those three decades, a housing bubble, credit
cards, a churning financial sector was keeping the economy artificially
juiced up, so sometimes it papered over some of these long-term trends.
But by the time I took office in 2009 as your President, we all know
the bubble had burst, and it cost millions of Americans their jobs, and
their homes, and their savings. And I know a lot of folks in this area
were hurt pretty bad. And the decades-long erosion that had been taking
place -- the erosion of middle-class security -- was suddenly laid bare
for everybody to see.
Now, today, five years after the start of that Great Recession,
America has fought its way back. (Applause.) We fought our way back.
Together, we saved the auto industry; took on a broken health care
system. (Applause.) We invested in new American technologies to
reverse our addiction to foreign oil. We doubled wind and solar power.
(Applause.) Together, we put in place tough new rules on the big
banks, and protections to crack down on the worst practices of mortgage
lenders and credit card companies. (Applause.) We changed a tax code
too skewed in favor of the wealthiest at the expense of working families
-- so we changed that, and we locked in tax cuts for 98 percent of
Americans, and we asked those at the top to pay a little bit more.
(Applause.)
So you add it all up, and over the past 40 months, our businesses
have created 7.2 million new jobs. This year, we’re off to our
strongest private sector job growth since 1999.
And because we bet on this country, suddenly foreign companies are,
too. Right now, more of Honda’s cars are made in America than anyplace
else on Earth. (Applause.) Airbus, the European aircraft company,
they’re building new planes in Alabama. (Applause.) And American
companies like Ford are replacing outsourcing with in-sourcing -- they’re
bringing jobs back home. (Applause.)
We sell more products made in America to the rest of the world than
ever before. We produce more natural gas than any country on Earth.
We’re about to produce more of our own oil than we buy from abroad for
the first time in nearly 20 years. (Applause.) The cost of health care
is growing at its slowest rate in 50 years. (Applause.) And our
deficits are falling at the fastest rate in 60 years. (Applause.)
So thanks to the grit and resilience and determination of the
American people -- of folks like you -- we’ve been able to clear away
the rubble from the financial crisis. We started to lay a new
foundation for stronger, more durable economic growth. And it's
happening in our own personal lives as well, right? A lot of us
tightened our belts, shed debt, maybe cut up a couple of credit cards,
refocused on those things that really matter.
As a country, we’ve recovered faster and gone further than most other
advanced nations in the world. With new American revolutions in energy
and technology and manufacturing and health care, we're actually poised
to reverse the forces that battered the middle class for so long, and
start building an economy where everyone who works hard can get ahead.
But -- and here's the big “but” -- I’m here to tell you today that
we're not there yet. We all know that. We're not there yet. We've got
more work to do. Even though our businesses are creating new jobs and
have broken record profits, nearly all the income gains of the past 10
years have continued to flow to the top 1 percent. The average CEO has
gotten a raise of nearly 40 percent since 2009. The average American
earns less than he or she did in 1999. And companies continue to hold
back on hiring those who’ve been out of work for some time.
Today, more students are earning their degree, but soaring costs
saddle them with unsustainable debt. Health care costs are slowing
down, but a lot of working families haven’t seen any of those savings
yet. The stock market rebound helped a lot of families get back much of
what they had lost in their 401(k)s, but millions of Americans still
have no idea how they’re going to be able to retire.
So in many ways, the trends that I spoke about here in 2005 -- eight
years ago -- the trend of a winner-take-all economy where a few are
doing better and better and better, while everybody else just treads
water -- those trends have been made worse by the recession. And that's
a problem.
This growing inequality not just of result, inequality of opportunity
-- this growing inequality is not just morally wrong, it’s bad
economics. Because when middle-class families have less to spend, guess
what, businesses have fewer consumers. When wealth concentrates at the
very top, it can inflate unstable bubbles that threaten the economy.
When the rungs on the ladder of opportunity grow farther and farther
apart, it undermines the very essence of America -- that idea that if
you work hard you can make it here.
And that’s why reversing these trends has to be Washington’s highest
priority. (Applause.) It has to be Washington's highest priority.
(Applause.) It’s certainly my highest priority. (Applause.)
Unfortunately, over the past couple of years, in particular,
Washington hasn’t just ignored this problem; too often, Washington has
made things worse. (Applause.)
And I have to say that -- because I'm looking around the room -- I've
got some friends here not just who are Democrats, I've got some
friends here who are Republicans -- (applause) -- and I worked with in
the state legislature and they did great work. But right now, what
we’ve got in Washington, we've seen a sizable group of Republican
lawmakers suggest that they wouldn’t vote to pay the very bills that
Congress rang up. And that fiasco harmed a fragile recovery in 2011 and
we can't afford to repeat that.
Then, rather than reduce our deficits with a scalpel -- by cutting
out programs we don’t need, fixing ones that we do need that maybe are
in need of reform, making government more efficient -- instead of doing
that, we've got folks who’ve insisted on leaving in place a meat cleaver
called the sequester that's cost jobs. It's harmed growth. It's hurt
our military. It's gutted investments in education and science and
medical research. (Applause.)
Almost every credible economist will tell you it's been a huge drag
on this recovery. And it means that we're under-investing in the things
that this country needs to make it a magnet for good jobs.
Then, over the last six months, this gridlock has gotten worse. I
didn't think that was possible. (Laughter.) The good news is a growing
number of Republican senators are looking to join their Democratic
counterparts and try to get things done in the Senate. So that's good
news. (Applause.) For example, they worked together on an immigration
bill that economists say will boost our economy by more than a trillion
dollars, strengthen border security, make the system work.
But you've got a faction of Republicans in the House who won’t even
give that bill a vote. And that same group gutted a farm bill that
America’s farmers depend on, but also America's most vulnerable children
depend on.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Boo's --
THE PRESIDENT: And if you ask some of these folks, some of these
folks mostly in the House, about their economic agenda how it is that
they'll strengthen the middle class, they’ll shift the topic to
“out-of-control government spending” –- despite the fact that we've cut
the deficit by nearly half as a share of the economy since I took
office. (Applause.)
Or they’ll talk about government assistance for the poor, despite the
fact that they’ve already cut early education for vulnerable kids.
They've already cut insurance for people who’ve lost their jobs through
no fault of their own. Or they’ll bring up Obamacare -- this is tried
and true -- despite the fact that our businesses have created nearly
twice as many jobs in this recovery as businesses had at the same point
in the last recovery when there was no Obamacare. (Applause.)
AUDIENCE MEMBER: My daughter has insurance now!
THE PRESIDENT: I appreciate that. (Applause.) That’s what this is
about. That’s what this is about. (Applause.) That’s what we've been
fighting for.
But with this endless parade of distractions and political posturing
and phony scandals, Washington has taken its eye off the ball. And I am
here to say this needs to stop. (Applause.) This needs to stop.
This moment does not require short-term thinking. It does not
require having the same old stale debates. Our focus has to be on the
basic economic issues that matter most to you, the people we represent.
That’s what we have to spend our time on and our energy on and our
focus on. (Applause.)
And as Washington prepares to enter another budget debate, the stakes
for our middle class and everybody who is fighting to get into the
middle class could not be higher. The countries that are passive in the
face of a global economy, those countries will lose the competition for
good jobs. They will lose the competition for high living standards.
That’s why America has to make the investments necessary to promote
long-term growth and shared prosperity -- rebuilding our manufacturing
base, educating our workforce, upgrading our transportation systems,
upgrading our information networks. (Applause.) That’s what we need to
be talking about. That’s what Washington needs to be focused on.
And that’s why, over the next several weeks, in towns across this
country, I will be engaging the American people in this debate.
(Applause.) I'll lay out my ideas for how we build on the cornerstones
of what it means to be middle class in America, and what it takes to
work your way into the middle class in America: Job security, with good
wages and durable industries. A good education. A home to call your
own. Affordable health care when you get sick. (Applause.) A secure
retirement even if you’re not rich. Reducing poverty. Reducing
inequality. Growing opportunity. That’s what we need. (Applause.)
That’s what we need. That’s what we need right now. That’s what we
need to be focused on. (Applause.)
Now, some of these ideas I’ve talked about before. Some of the ideas
I offer will be new. Some will require Congress. Some I will pursue
on my own. (Applause.) Some ideas will benefit folks right away. Some
will take years to fully implement. But the key is to break through
the tendency in Washington to just bounce from crisis to crisis. What
we need is not a three-month plan, or even a three-year plan; we need a
long-term American strategy, based on steady, persistent effort, to
reverse the forces that have conspired against the middle class for
decades. That has to be our project. (Applause.)
Now, of course, we’ll keep pressing on other key priorities. I want
to get this immigration bill done. We still need to work on reducing
gun violence. (Applause.) We’ve got to continue to end the war in
Afghanistan, re-balance our fight against al Qaeda. (Applause.) We need
to combat climate change. We’ve got to standing up for civil rights.
We’ve got to stand up for women’s rights. (Applause.)
So all those issues are important, and we’ll be fighting on every one
of those issues. But if we don’t have a growing, thriving middle class
then we won’t have the resources to solve a lot of these problems. We
won’t have the resolve, the optimism, the sense of unity that we need to
solve many of these other issues.
Now, in this effort, I will look to work with Republicans as well as
Democrats wherever I can. And I sincerely believe that there are
members of both parties who understand this moment, understand what’s at
stake, and I will welcome ideas from anybody across the political
spectrum. But I will not allow gridlock, or inaction, or willful
indifference to get in our way. (Applause.)
That means whatever executive authority I have to help the middle
class, I’ll use it. (Applause.) Where I can’t act on my own and
Congress isn’t cooperating, I’ll pick up the phone -- I’ll call CEOs;
I’ll call philanthropists; I’ll call college presidents; I’ll call labor
leaders. I’ll call anybody who can help -- and enlist them in our
efforts. (Applause.)
Because the choices that we, the people, make right now will
determine whether or not every American has a fighting chance in the
21st century. And it will lay the foundation for our children’s future,
our grandchildren’s future, for all Americans.
So let me give you a quick preview of what I’ll be fighting for and
why. The first cornerstone of a strong, growing middle class has to be,
as I said before, an economy that generates more good jobs in durable,
growing industries. That's how this area was built. That's how America
prospered. Because anybody who was willing to work, they could go out
there and they could find themselves a job, and they could build a life
for themselves and their family.
Now, over the past four years, for the first time since the 1990s,
the number of American manufacturing jobs has actually gone up instead
of down. That's the good news. (Applause.) But we can do more. So
I’m going to push new initiatives to help more manufacturers bring more
jobs back to the United States. (Applause.) We’re going to continue to
focus on strategies to make sure our tax code rewards companies that
are not shipping jobs overseas, but creating jobs right here in the
United States of America. (Applause.)
We want to make sure that -- we’re going to create strategies to make
sure that good jobs in wind and solar and natural gas that are lowering
costs and, at the same time, reducing dangerous carbon pollution happen
right here in the United States. (Applause.)
And something that Cheri and I were talking about on the way over
here -- I’m going to be pushing to open more manufacturing innovation
institutes that turn regions left behind by global competition into
global centers of cutting-edge jobs. So let’s tell the world that
America is open for business. (Applause.) I know there’s an old site
right here in Galesburg, over on Monmouth Boulevard -- let’s put some
folks to work. (Applause.)
Tomorrow, I’ll also visit the Port of Jacksonville, Florida to offer
new ideas for doing what America has always done best, which is building
things. Pat and I were talking before I came -- backstage -- Pat
Quinn -- he was talking about how I came over the Don Moffitt Bridge.
(Applause.) But we’ve got work to do all across the country. We’ve got
ports that aren’t ready for the new supertankers that are going to
begin passing through the new Panama Canal in two years’ time. If we
don’t get that done, those tankers are going to go someplace else.
We’ve got more than 100,000 bridges that are old enough to qualify for
Medicare. (Laughter and applause.)
Businesses depend on our transportation systems, on our power grids,
on our communications networks. And rebuilding them creates good-paying
jobs right now that can’t be outsourced. (Applause.)
And by the way, this isn’t a Democratic idea. Republicans built a
lot of stuff. This is the Land of Lincoln. Lincoln was all about
building stuff -- first Republican President. (Applause.) And yet, as a
share of our economy, we invest less in our infrastructure than we did
two decades ago. And that’s inefficient at a time when it’s as cheap as
it’s been since the 1950s to build things. It’s inexcusable at a time
when so many of the workers who build stuff for a living are sitting at
home waiting for a call.
The longer we put this off, the more expensive it will be and the
less competitive we will be. Businesses of tomorrow will not locate
near old roads and outdated ports. They’ll relocate to places with
high-speed Internet, and high-tech schools, and systems that move air
and auto traffic faster, and not to mention will get parents home
quicker from work because we’ll be eliminating some of these traffic
jams. And we can watch all of that happen in other countries, and start
falling behind, or we can choose to make it happen right here, in the
United States. (Applause.)
In an age when jobs know no borders, companies are also going to seek
out the countries that boast the most talented citizens, and they’ll
reward folks who have the skills and the talents they need -- they’ll
reward those folks with good pay.
The days when the wages for a worker with a high school degree could
keep pace with the earnings of somebody who got some sort of higher
education -- those days are over. Everybody here knows that. There are
a whole bunch of folks here whose dads or grandpas worked at a plant,
didn’t need a high school education. You could just go there. If you
were willing to work hard, you might be able to get two jobs. And you
could support your family, have a vacation, own your home. But
technology and global competition, they’re not going away. Those old
days aren’t coming back.
So we can either throw up our hands and resign ourselves to
diminishing living standards, or we can do what America has always done,
which is adapt, and pull together, and fight back, and win. That’s
what we have to do. (Applause.)
And that brings me to the second cornerstone of a strong middle class
-- and everybody here knows it -- an education that prepares our
children and our workers for the global competition that they’re going
to face. (Applause.) And if you think education is expensive, wait
until you see how much ignorance costs in the 21st century. (Laughter
and applause.)
If we don’t make this investment, we’re going to put our kids, our
workers, and our country at a competitive disadvantage for decades. So
we have to begin in the earliest years. And that’s why I’m going to
keep pushing to make high-quality preschool available for every
4-year-old in America. (Applause.) Not just because we know it works
for our kids, but because it provides a vital support system for working
parents.
And I’m going to take action in the education area to spur innovation
that don’t require Congress. (Applause.) So, today, for example, as
we speak, federal agencies are moving on my plan to connect 99 percent
of America’s students to high-speed Internet over the next five years.
We’re making that happen right now. (Applause.) We’ve already begun
meeting with business leaders and tech entrepreneurs and innovative
educators to identify the best ideas for redesigning our high schools so
that they teach the skills required for a high-tech economy.
And we’re also going to keep pushing new efforts to train workers for
changing jobs. So here in Galesburg, for example, a lot of the workers
that were laid off at Maytag chose to enroll in retraining programs
like the one at Carl Sandburg College. (Applause.) And while it didn’t
pay off for everyone, a lot of the folks who were retrained found jobs
that suited them even better and paid even more than the ones they had
lost.
And that’s why I’ve asked Congress to start a Community College to
Career initiative, so that workers can earn the skills that high-tech
jobs demand without leaving their hometown. (Applause.) And I’m going
to challenge CEOs from some of America’s best companies to hire more
Americans who’ve got what it takes to fill that job opening but have
been laid off for so long that nobody is giving their résumé an honest
look.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: More talent!
THE PRESIDENT: That, too.
I’m also going to use the power of my office over the next few months
to highlight a topic that’s straining the budgets of just about every
American family -- and that’s the soaring cost of higher education.
(Applause.) Everybody is touched by this, including your President, who
had a whole bunch of loans he had to pay off. (Laughter.)
Three years ago, I worked with Democrats to reform the student loan
system so that taxpayer dollars stopped padding the pockets of big
banks, and instead helped more kids afford college. (Applause.) Then, I
capped loan repayments at 10 percent of monthly incomes for responsible
borrowers, so that if somebody graduated and they decided to take a
teaching job, for example, that didn’t pay a lot of money, they knew
that they were never going to have to pay more than 10 percent of their
income and they could afford to go into a profession that they loved.
That’s in place right now. (Applause.) And this week, we’re working
with both parties to reverse the doubling of student loan rates that
happened a few weeks ago because of congressional inaction. (Applause.)
So this is all a good start -- but it isn’t enough. Families and
taxpayers can’t just keep paying more and more and more into an
undisciplined system where costs just keep on going up and up and up.
We’ll never have enough loan money, we’ll never have enough grant money,
to keep up with costs that are going up 5, 6, 7 percent a year. We’ve
got to get more out of what we pay for.
Now, some colleges are testing new approaches to shorten the path to a
degree, or blending teaching with online learning to help students
master material and earn credits in less time. In some states, they’re
testing new ways to fund college based not just on how many students
enroll, but how many of them graduate, how well did they do.
So this afternoon, I’ll visit the University of Central Missouri to
highlight their efforts to deliver more bang for the buck to their
students. And in the coming months, I will lay out an aggressive
strategy to shake up the system, tackle rising costs, and improve value
for middle-class students and their families. It is critical that we
make sure that college is affordable for every single American who’s
willing to work for it. (Applause.)
Now, so you’ve got a good job; you get a good education -- those have
always been the key stepping stones into the middle class. But a home
of your own has always been the clearest expression of middle-class
security. For most families, that’s your biggest asset. For most
families, that’s where your life’s work has been invested. And that
changed during the crisis, when we saw millions of middle-class families
experience their home values plummeting. The good news is over the
past four years, we’ve helped more responsible homeowners stay in their
homes. And today, sales are up and prices are up, and fewer Americans
see their homes underwater.
But we’re not done yet. The key now is to encourage home ownership
that isn’t based on unrealistic bubbles, but instead is based on a solid
foundation, where buyers and lenders play by the same set of rules,
rules that are clear and transparent and fair.
So already, I’ve asked Congress to pass a really good, bipartisan
idea -- one that was championed, by the way, by Mitt Romney’s economic adviser -- and this is the idea to give every homeowner the chance to
refinance their mortgage while rates are still low so they can save
thousands of dollars a year. (Applause.) It will be like a tax cut for
families who can refinance.
I’m also acting on my own to cut red tape for responsible families
who want to get a mortgage but the bank is saying no. We’ll work with
both parties to turn the page on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and build a
housing finance system that’s rock-solid for future generations.
So we’ve got more work to do to strengthen home ownership in this
country. But along with home ownership, the fourth cornerstone of what
it means to be middle class in this country is a secure retirement.
(Applause.) I hear from too many people across the country, face to
face or in letters that they send me, that they feel as if retirement is
just receding from their grasp. It’s getting farther and farther
away. They can't see it.
Now, today, a rising stock market has millions of retirement balances
going up, and some of the losses that had taken place during the
financial crisis have been recovered. But we still live with an
upside-down system where those at the top, folks like me, get generous
tax incentives to save, while tens of millions of hardworking Americans
who are struggling, they get none of those breaks at all. So as we work
to reform our tax code, we should find new ways to make it easier for
workers to put away money, and free middle-class families from the fear
that they won't be able to retire. (Applause.)
And if Congress is looking for a bipartisan place to get started, I
should just say they don’t have to look far. We mentioned immigration
reform before. Economists show that immigration reform makes
undocumented workers pay their full share of taxes, and that actually
shores up the Social Security system for years. So we should get that
done. (Applause.)
Good job; good education for your kids; home of your own; secure retirement.
Fifth, I'm going to keep focusing on health care -- (applause) --
because middle-class families and small business owners deserve the
security of knowing that neither an accident or an illness is going to
threaten the dreams that you’ve worked a lifetime to build.
As we speak, we're well on our way to fully implementing the
Affordable Care Act. (Applause.) We're going to implement it. Now, if
you’re one of the 85 percent of Americans who already have health
insurance either through the job or Medicare or Medicaid, you don’t have
to do anything, but you do have new benefits and better protections
than you did before. You may not know it, but you do. Free checkups,
mammograms, discounted medicines if you're on Medicare -- that’s what
the Affordable Care Act means. You're already getting a better deal.
No lifetime limits.
If you don’t have health insurance, then starting on October 1st,
private plans will actually compete for your business, and you'll be
able to comparison-shop online. There will be a marketplace online,
just like you’d buy a flat-screen TV or plane tickets or anything else
you're doing online, and you'll be able to buy an insurance package that
fits your budget and is right for you.
And if you're one of the up to half of all Americans who’ve been sick
or have a preexisting condition -- if you look at this auditorium,
about half of you probably have a preexisting condition that insurance
companies could use to not give you insurance if you lost your job or
lost your insurance -- well, this law means that beginning January 1st,
insurance companies will finally have to cover you and charge you the
same rates as everybody else, even if you have a preexisting condition.
(Applause.) That’s what the Affordable Care Act does. That’s what it
does. (Applause.)
Now, look, I know because I've been living it that there are folks
out there who are actively working to make this law fail. And I don’t
always understand exactly what their logic is here, why they think
giving insurance to folks who don’t have it and making folks with
insurance a little more secure, why they think that’s a bad thing. But
despite the politically motivated misinformation campaign, the states
that have committed themselves to making this law work are finding that
competition and choice are actually pushing costs down.
So just last week, New York announced that premiums for consumers who
buy their insurance in these online marketplaces will be at least 50
percent lower than what they're paying today -- 50 percent lower.
(Applause.) So folks' premiums in the individual market will drop by 50
percent. And for them and for the millions of Americans who’ve been
able to cover their sick kids for the first time -- like this gentlemen
who just said his daughter has got health insurance -- or have been able
to cover their employees more cheaply, or are able to have their kids
who are younger than -- who are 25 or 26 stay on their parents' plan --
(applause) -- for all those folks, you'll have the security of knowing
that everything you’ve worked hard for is no longer one illness away
from being wiped out. (Applause.)
Finally, as we work to strengthen these cornerstones of middle-class
security -- good job with decent wages and benefits, a good education,
home of your own, retirement security, health care security -- I’m going
to make the case for why we've got to rebuild ladders of opportunity
for all those Americans who haven't quite made it yet -- who are working
hard but are still suffering poverty wages, who are struggling to get
full-time work. (Applause.)
There are a lot of folks who are still struggling out here, too many
people in poverty. Here in America, we’ve never guaranteed success --
that's not what we do. More than some other countries, we expect people
to be self-reliant. Nobody is going to do something for you.
(Applause.) We've tolerated a little more inequality for the sake of a
more dynamic, more adaptable economy. That's all for the good. But
that idea has always been combined with a commitment to equality of
opportunity to upward mobility -- the idea that no matter how poor you
started, if you're willing to work hard and discipline yourself and
defer gratification, you can make it, too. That's the American idea.
(Applause.)
Unfortunately, opportunities for upward mobility in America have
gotten harder to find over the past 30 years. And that’s a betrayal of
the American idea. And that’s why we have to do a lot more to give
every American the chance to work their way into the middle class.
The best defense against all of these forces -- global competition,
economic polarization -- is the strength of the community. So we need a
new push to rebuild rundown neighborhoods. (Applause.) We need new
partnerships with some of the hardest-hit towns in America to get them
back on their feet. And because no one who works full-time in America
should have to live in poverty, I am going to keep making the case that
we need to raise the minimum wage -- (applause) -- because it's lower
right now than it was when Ronald Reagan took office. It's time for the
minimum wage to go up. (Applause.)
We're not a people who allow chance of birth to decide life’s biggest
winners or losers. And after years in which we’ve seen how easy it can
be for any of us to fall on hard times -- folks in Galesburg, folks in
the Quad Cities, you know there are good people who work hard and
sometimes they get a bad break. A plant leaves. Somebody gets sick.
Somebody loses a home. We've seen it in our family, in our friends and
our neighbors. We've seen it happen. And that means we cannot turn our
backs when bad breaks hit any of our fellow citizens.
So good jobs; a better bargain for the middle class and the folks who
are working to get into the middle class; an economy that grows from
the middle out, not the top down -- that's where I will focus my
energies. (Applause.) That's where I will focus my energies not just
for the next few months, but for the remainder of my presidency.
These are the plans that I'll lay out across this country. But I
won’t be able to do it alone, so I'm going to be calling on all of us to
take up this cause. We’ll need our businesses, who are some of the
best in the world, to pressure Congress to invest in our future. And
I’ll be asking our businesses to set an example by providing decent
wages and salaries to their own employees. And I’m going to highlight
the ones that do just that.
There are companies like Costco, which pays good wages and offers
good benefits. (Applause.) Companies like -- there are companies like
the Container Store, that prides itself on training its employees and on
employee satisfaction -- because these companies prove that it’s not
just good for the employees, it’s good for their businesses to treat
workers well. It’s good for America. (Applause.)
So I’m going to be calling on the private sector to step up. I will
be saying to Democrats we’ve got to question some of our old
assumptions. We’ve got to be willing to redesign or get rid of programs
that don't work as well as they should. (Applause.) We’ve got to be
willing to -- we’ve got to embrace changes to cherished priorities so
that they work better in this new age. We can't just -- Democrats can't
just stand pat and just defend whatever government is doing. If we
believe that government can give the middle class a fair shot in this
new century -- and I believe that -- we’ve an obligation to prove it.
And that means that we’ve got to be open to new ways of doing things.
And we’ll need Republicans in Congress to set aside short-term politics and work with me to find common ground. (Applause.)
It’s interesting, in the run-up to this speech, a lot of reporters
say that, well, Mr. President, these are all good ideas, but some of
you’ve said before; some of them sound great, but you can't get those
through Congress. Republicans won’t agree with you. And I say, look,
the fact is there are Republicans in Congress right now who privately
agree with me on a lot of the ideas I’ll be proposing. I know because
they’ve said so. But they worry they’ll face swift political
retaliation for cooperating with me.
Now, there are others who will dismiss every idea I put forward
either because they’re playing to their most strident supporters, or in
some cases because, sincerely, they have a fundamentally different
vision for America -- one that says inequality is both inevitable and
just; one that says an unfettered free market without any restraints
inevitably produces the best outcomes, regardless of the pain and
uncertainty imposed on ordinary families; and government is the problem
and we should just shrink it as small as we can.
In either case, I say to these members of Congress: I’m laying out
my ideas to give the middle class a better shot. So now it’s time for
you to lay out your ideas. (Applause.) You can't just be against
something. You got to be for something. (Applause.)
Even if you think I’ve done everything wrong, the trends I just
talked about were happening well before I took office. So it’s not
enough for you just to oppose me. You got to be for something. What
are your ideas? If you’re willing to work with me to strengthen
American manufacturing and rebuild this country’s infrastructure, let’s
go. If you’ve got better ideas to bring down the cost of college for
working families, let’s hear them. If you think you have a better plan
for making sure that every American has the security of quality,
affordable health care, then stop taking meaningless repeal votes, and
share your concrete ideas with the country. (Applause.)
Repealing Obamacare and cutting spending is not an economic plan. It’s not.
If you’re serious about a balanced, long-term fiscal plan that
replaces the mindless cuts currently in place, or if you’re interested
in tax reform that closes corporate loopholes and gives working families
a better deal, I’m ready to work. (Applause.) But you should know
that I will not accept deals that don’t meet the basic test of
strengthening the prospects of hardworking families. This is the agenda
we have to be working on. (Applause.)
We’ve come a long way since I first took office. (Applause.) As a
country, we’re older and wiser. I don’t know if I’m wiser, but I’m
certainly older. (Laughter.) And as long as Congress doesn’t
manufacture another crisis -- as long as we don’t shut down the
government just because I’m for keeping it open -- (laughter) -- as long
as we don’t risk a U.S. default over paying bills that we’ve already
racked up, something that we’ve never done -- we can probably muddle
along without taking bold action. If we stand pat and we don’t do any
of the things I talked about, our economy will grow, although slower
than it should. New businesses will form. The unemployment rate will
probably tick down a little bit. Just by virtue of our size and our
natural resources and, most of all, because of the talent of our people,
America will remain a world power, and the majority of us will figure
out how to get by.
But you know what, that’s our choice. If we just stand by and do
nothing in the face of immense change, understand that part of our
character will be lost. Our founding precepts about wide-open
opportunity, each generation doing better than the last -- that will be a
myth, not reality. The position of the middle class will erode
further. Inequality will continue to increase. Money’s power will
distort our politics even more.
Social tensions will rise, as various groups fight to hold on to what
they have, or start blaming somebody else for why their position isn’t
improving. And the fundamental optimism that’s always propelled us
forward will give way to cynicism or nostalgia.
And that’s not the vision I have for this country. It’s not the
vision you have for this country. That’s not the America we know.
That’s not the vision we should be settling for. That’s not a vision we
should be passing on to our children.
I have now run my last campaign. I do not intend to wait until the
next campaign or the next President before tackling the issues that
matter. I care about one thing and one thing only, and that’s how to
use every minute -- (applause) -- the only thing I care about is how to
use every minute of the remaining 1,276 days of my term -- (laughter) --
to make this country work for working Americans again. (Applause.)
That’s all I care about. I don’t have another election. (Applause.)
Because I’ll tell you, Galesburg, that’s where I believe America
needs to go. I believe that’s where the American people want to go.
And it may seem hard today, but if we’re willing to take a few bold
steps -- if Washington will just shake off its complacency and set aside
the kind of slash-and-burn partisanship that we’ve just seen for way
too long -- if we just make some common-sense decisions, our economy
will be stronger a year from now. It will be stronger five years from
now. It will be stronger 10 years from now. (Applause.)
If we focus on what matters, then more Americans will know the pride
of that first paycheck. More Americans will have the satisfaction of
flipping the sign to “Open” on their own business. More Americans will
have the joy of scratching the height of their kid on that door of their
brand-new home. (Applause.)
And in the end, isn't that what makes us special? It's not the
ability to generate incredible wealth for the few; it's our ability to
give everybody a chance to pursue their own true measure of happiness.
(Applause.) We haven’t just wanted success for ourselves -- we want it
for our neighbors, too. (Applause.)
When we think about our own communities -- we're not a mean people;
we're not a selfish people; we're not a people that just looks out for
“number one.” Why should our politics reflect those kinds of values?
That’s why we don’t call it John’s dream or Susie’s dream or Barack’s
dream or Pat's dream -- we call it the American Dream. And that’s what
makes this country special -- the idea that no matter who you are or
what you look like or where you come from or who you love, you can make
it if you try. (Applause.) That’s what we're fighting for.
So, yes, Congress is tough right now, but that’s not going to stop
me. We're going to do everything we can, wherever we can, with or
without Congress, to make things happen. We're going to go on the road
and talk to you, and you'll have ideas, and we want to see which ones we
can implement. But we're going to focus on this thing that matters.
One of America’s greatest writers, Carl Sandburg, born right here in
Galesburg over a century ago -- (applause) -- he saw the railroads bring
the world to the prairie, and then the prairie sent out its bounty to
the world. And he saw the advent of new industries, new technologies,
and he watched populations shift. He saw fortunes made and lost. And
he saw how change could be painful -- how a new age could unsettle
long-held customs and ways of life. But he had that frontier optimism,
and so he saw something more on the horizon. And he wrote, “I speak of
new cities and new people. The past is a bucket of ashes. Yesterday is
a wind gone down, a sun dropped in the west. There is only an ocean of
tomorrows, a sky of tomorrows.”
Well, America, we’ve made it through the worst of yesterday’s winds.
We just have to have the courage to keep moving forward. We've got to
set our eyes on the horizon. We will find an ocean of tomorrows. We
will find a sky of tomorrows for the American people and for this great
country that we love.
So thank you. God bless you. And God bless the United States of America. (Applause.)
No comments:
Post a Comment