Remarks by the President on Economic Mobility
Washington, D.C.
December 4, 2013
11:31 A.M. EST
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. (Applause.) Thank you, everybody. Thank you
so much. Please, please have a seat. Thank you so much. Well, thank you,
Neera, for the wonderful introduction and sharing a story that resonated with
me. There were a lot of parallels in my life and probably resonated with some
of you.
Over the past 10 years, the Center for American Progress has done
incredible work to shape the debate over expanding opportunity for all
Americans. And I could not be more grateful to CAP not only for giving me a lot
of good policy ideas, but also giving me a lot of staff. (Laughter.) My
friend, John Podesta, ran my transition; my Chief of Staff, Denis McDonough, did
a stint at CAP. So you guys are obviously doing a good job training
folks.
I also want to thank all the members of Congress and my administration who
are here today for the wonderful work that they do. I want to thank Mayor Gray
and everyone here at THEARC for having me. This center, which I’ve been to
quite a bit, have had a chance to see some of the great work that’s done here.
And all the nonprofits that call THEARC home offer access to everything from
education, to health care, to a safe shelter from the streets, which means that
you’re harnessing the power of community to expand opportunity for folks here in
D.C. And your work reflects a tradition that runs through our history -- a
belief that we’re greater together than we are on our own. And that’s what I’ve
come here to talk about today.
Over the last two months, Washington has been dominated by some pretty
contentious debates -- I think that’s fair to say. And between a reckless
shutdown by congressional Republicans in an effort to repeal the Affordable Care
Act, and admittedly poor execution on my administration’s part in implementing
the latest stage of the new law, nobody has acquitted themselves very well these
past few months. So it’s not surprising that the American people’s frustrations
with Washington are at an all-time high.
But we know that people’s frustrations run deeper than these most recent
political battles. Their frustration is rooted in their own daily battles -- to
make ends meet, to pay for college, buy a home, save for retirement. It’s
rooted in the nagging sense that no matter how hard they work, the deck is
stacked against them. And it’s rooted in the fear that their kids won’t be
better off than they were. They may not follow the constant back-and-forth in
Washington or all the policy details, but they experience in a very personal way
the relentless, decades-long trend that I want to spend some time talking about
today. And that is a dangerous and growing inequality and lack of upward
mobility that has jeopardized middle-class America’s basic bargain -- that if
you work hard, you have a chance to get ahead.
I believe this is the defining challenge of our time: Making sure our
economy works for every working American. It’s why I ran for President. It was
at the center of last year’s campaign. It drives everything I do in this
office. And I know I’ve raised this issue before, and some will ask why I raise
the issue again right now. I do it because the outcomes of the debates we’re
having right now -- whether it’s health care, or the budget, or reforming our
housing and financial systems -- all these things will have real, practical
implications for every American. And I am convinced that the decisions we make
on these issues over the next few years will determine whether or not our
children will grow up in an America where opportunity is real.
Now, the premise that we’re all created equal is the opening line in the
American story. And while we don’t promise equal outcomes, we have strived to
deliver equal opportunity -- the idea that success doesn’t depend on being born
into wealth or privilege, it depends on effort and merit. And with every
chapter we’ve added to that story, we’ve worked hard to put those words into
practice.
It was Abraham Lincoln, a self-described “poor man’s son,” who started a
system of land grant colleges all over this country so that any poor man’s son
could go learn something new.
When farms gave way to factories, a rich man’s son named Teddy Roosevelt
fought for an eight-hour workday, protections for workers, and busted monopolies
that kept prices high and wages low.
When millions lived in poverty, FDR fought for Social Security, and
insurance for the unemployed, and a minimum wage.
When millions died without health insurance, LBJ fought for Medicare and
Medicaid.
Together, we forged a New Deal, declared a War on Poverty in a great
society. We built a ladder of opportunity to climb, and stretched out a safety
net beneath so that if we fell, it wouldn’t be too far, and we could bounce
back. And as a result, America built the largest middle class the world has
ever known. And for the three decades after World War II, it was the engine of
our prosperity.
Now, we can’t look at the past through rose-colored glasses. The economy
didn’t always work for everyone. Racial discrimination locked millions out of
poverty -- or out of opportunity. Women were too often confined to a handful of
often poorly paid professions. And it was only through painstaking struggle
that more women, and minorities, and Americans with disabilities began to win
the right to more fairly and fully participate in the economy.
Nevertheless, during the post-World War II years, the economic ground felt
stable and secure for most Americans, and the future looked brighter than the
past. And for some, that meant following in your old man’s footsteps at the
local plant, and you knew that a blue-collar job would let you buy a home, and a
car, maybe a vacation once in a while, health care, a reliable pension. For
others, it meant going to college -- in some cases, maybe the first in your
family to go to college. And it meant graduating without taking on loads of
debt, and being able to count on advancement through a vibrant job market.
Now, it’s true that those at the top, even in those years, claimed a much
larger share of income than the rest: The top 10 percent consistently took home
about one-third of our national income. But that kind of inequality took place
in a dynamic market economy where everyone’s wages and incomes were growing.
And because of upward mobility, the guy on the factory floor could picture his
kid running the company some day.
But starting in the late ‘70s, this social compact began to unravel.
Technology made it easier for companies to do more with less, eliminating
certain job occupations. A more competitive world lets companies ship jobs
anywhere. And as good manufacturing jobs automated or headed offshore, workers
lost their leverage, jobs paid less and offered fewer benefits.
As values of community broke down, and competitive pressure increased,
businesses lobbied Washington to weaken unions and the value of the minimum
wage. As a trickle-down ideology became more prominent, taxes were slashed for
the wealthiest, while investments in things that make us all richer, like
schools and infrastructure, were allowed to wither. And for a certain period of
time, we could ignore this weakening economic foundation, in part because more
families were relying on two earners as women entered the workforce. We took on
more debt financed by a juiced-up housing market. But when the music stopped,
and the crisis hit, millions of families were stripped of whatever cushion they
had left.
And the result is an economy that’s become profoundly unequal, and families
that are more insecure. I’ll just give you a few statistics. Since 1979, when
I graduated from high school, our productivity is up by more than 90 percent,
but the income of the typical family has increased by less than eight percent.
Since 1979, our economy has more than doubled in size, but most of that growth
has flowed to a fortunate few.
The top 10 percent no longer takes in one-third of our income -- it now
takes half. Whereas in the past, the average CEO made about 20 to 30 times the
income of the average worker, today’s CEO now makes 273 times more. And
meanwhile, a family in the top 1 percent has a net worth 288 times higher than
the typical family, which is a record for this country.
So the basic bargain at the heart of our economy has frayed. In fact, this
trend towards growing inequality is not unique to America’s market economy.
Across the developed world, inequality has increased. Some of you may have
seen just last week, the Pope himself spoke about this at eloquent length. “How
can it be,” he wrote, “that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless
person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two
points?”
But this increasing inequality is most pronounced in our country, and it
challenges the very essence of who we are as a people. Understand we’ve never
begrudged success in America. We aspire to it. We admire folks who start new
businesses, create jobs, and invent the products that enrich our lives. And we
expect them to be rewarded handsomely for it. In fact, we've often accepted
more income inequality than many other nations for one big reason -- because we
were convinced that America is a place where even if you’re born with nothing,
with a little hard work you can improve your own situation over time and build
something better to leave your kids. As Lincoln once said, “While we do not
propose any war upon capital, we do wish to allow the humblest man an equal
chance to get rich with everybody else.”
The problem is that alongside increased inequality, we’ve seen diminished
levels of upward mobility in recent years. A child born in the top 20 percent
has about a 2-in-3 chance of staying at or near the top. A child born into the
bottom 20 percent has a less than 1-in-20 shot at making it to the top. He’s 10
times likelier to stay where he is. In fact, statistics show not only that our
levels of income inequality rank near countries like Jamaica and Argentina, but
that it is harder today for a child born here in America to improve her station
in life than it is for children in most of our wealthy allies -- countries like
Canada or Germany or France. They have greater mobility than we do, not less.
The idea that so many children are born into poverty in the wealthiest
nation on Earth is heartbreaking enough. But the idea that a child may never be
able to escape that poverty because she lacks a decent education or health care,
or a community that views her future as their own, that should offend all of us
and it should compel us to action. We are a better country than this.
So let me repeat: The combined trends of increased inequality and
decreasing mobility pose a fundamental threat to the American Dream, our way of
life, and what we stand for around the globe. And it is not simply a moral
claim that I’m making here. There are practical consequences to rising
inequality and reduced mobility.
For one thing, these trends are bad for our economy. One study finds that
growth is more fragile and recessions are more frequent in countries with
greater inequality. And that makes sense. When families have less to spend,
that means businesses have fewer customers, and households rack up greater
mortgage and credit card debt; meanwhile, concentrated wealth at the top is less
likely to result in the kind of broadly based consumer spending that drives our
economy, and together with lax regulation, may contribute to risky speculative
bubbles.
And rising inequality and declining mobility are also bad for our families
and social cohesion -- not just because we tend to trust our institutions less,
but studies show we actually tend to trust each other less when there’s greater
inequality. And greater inequality is associated with less mobility between
generations. That means it’s not just temporary; the effects last. It creates
a vicious cycle. For example, by the time she turns three years old, a child
born into a low-income home hears 30 million fewer words than a child from a
well-off family, which means by the time she starts school she’s already behind,
and that deficit can compound itself over time.
And finally, rising inequality and declining mobility are bad for our
democracy. Ordinary folks can’t write massive campaign checks or hire
high-priced lobbyists and lawyers to secure policies that tilt the playing field
in their favor at everyone else’s expense. And so people get the bad taste that
the system is rigged, and that increases cynicism and polarization, and it
decreases the political participation that is a requisite part of our system of
self-government.
So this is an issue that we have to tackle head on. And if, in fact, the
majority of Americans agree that our number-one priority is to restore
opportunity and broad-based growth for all Americans, the question is why has
Washington consistently failed to act? And I think a big reason is the myths
that have developed around the issue of inequality.
First, there is the myth that this is a problem restricted to a small share
of predominantly minority poor -- that this isn’t a broad-based problem, this is
a black problem or a Hispanic problem or a Native American problem. Now, it’s
true that the painful legacy of discrimination means that African Americans,
Latinos, Native Americans are far more likely to suffer from a lack of
opportunity -- higher unemployment, higher poverty rates. It’s also true that
women still make 77 cents on the dollar compared to men. So we’re going to need
strong application of antidiscrimination laws. We’re going to need immigration
reform that grows the economy and takes people out of the shadows. We’re going
to need targeted initiatives to close those gaps. (Applause.)
But here’s an important point. The decades-long shifts in the economy have
hurt all groups: poor and middle class; inner city and rural folks; men and
women; and Americans of all races. And as a consequence, some of the social
patterns that contribute to declining mobility that were once attributed to the
urban poor -- that’s a particular problem for the inner city: single-parent
households or drug abuse -- it turns out now we’re seeing that pop up
everywhere.
A new study shows that disparities in education, mental health, obesity,
absent fathers, isolation from church, isolation from community groups -- these
gaps are now as much about growing up rich or poor as they are about anything
else. The gap in test scores between poor kids and wealthy kids is now nearly
twice what it is between white kids and black kids. Kids with working-class
parents are 10 times likelier than kids with middle- or upper-class parents to
go through a time when their parents have no income. So the fact is this: The
opportunity gap in America is now as much about class as it is about race, and
that gap is growing.
So if we’re going to take on growing inequality and try to improve upward
mobility for all people, we’ve got to move beyond the false notion that this is
an issue exclusively of minority concern. And we have to reject a politics that
suggests any effort to address it in a meaningful way somehow pits the interests
of a deserving middle class against those of an undeserving poor in search of
handouts. (Applause.)
Second, we need to dispel the myth that the goals of growing the economy
and reducing inequality are necessarily in conflict, when they should actually
work in concert. We know from our history that our economy grows best from the
middle out, when growth is more widely shared. And we know that beyond a
certain level of inequality, growth actually slows altogether.
Third, we need to set aside the belief that government cannot do anything
about reducing inequality. It’s true that government cannot prevent all the
downsides of the technological change and global competition that are out there
right now, and some of those forces are also some of the things that are helping
us grow. And it’s also true that some programs in the past, like welfare before
it was reformed, were sometimes poorly designed, created disincentives to
work.
But we’ve also seen how government action time and again can make an
enormous difference in increasing opportunity and bolstering ladders into the
middle class. Investments in education, laws establishing collective
bargaining, and a minimum wage -- these all contributed to rising standards of
living for massive numbers of Americans. (Applause.) Likewise, when previous
generations declared that every citizen of this country deserved a basic measure
of security -- a floor through which they could not fall -- we helped millions
of Americans live in dignity, and gave millions more the confidence to aspire to
something better, by taking a risk on a great idea.
Without Social Security, nearly half of seniors would be living in poverty
-- half. Today, fewer than 1 in 10 do. Before Medicare, only half of all
seniors had some form of health insurance. Today, virtually all do. And
because we’ve strengthened that safety net, and expanded pro-work and pro-family
tax credits like the Earned Income Tax Credit, a recent study found that the
poverty rate has fallen by 40 percent since the 1960s. And these endeavors
didn’t just make us a better country; they reaffirmed that we are a great
country.
So we can make a difference on this. In fact, that’s our generation’s task
-- to rebuild America’s economic and civic foundation to continue the expansion
of opportunity for this generation and the next generation. (Applause.) And
like Neera, I take this personally. I’m only here because this country educated
my grandfather on the GI Bill. When my father left and my mom hit hard times
trying to raise my sister and me while she was going to school, this country
helped make sure we didn’t go hungry. When Michelle, the daughter of a shift
worker at a water plant and a secretary, wanted to go to college, just like me,
this country helped us afford it until we could pay it back.
So what drives me as a grandson, a son, a father -- as an American -- is to
make sure that every striving, hardworking, optimistic kid in America has the
same incredible chance that this country gave me. (Applause.) It has been the
driving force between everything we’ve done these past five years. And over the
course of the next year, and for the rest of my presidency, that’s where you
should expect my administration to focus all our efforts. (Applause.)
Now, you'll be pleased to know this is not a State of the Union Address.
(Laughter.) And many of the ideas that can make the biggest difference in
expanding opportunity I’ve presented before. But let me offer a few key
principles, just a roadmap that I believe should guide us in both our
legislative agenda and our administrative efforts.
To begin with, we have to continue to relentlessly push a growth agenda.
It may be true that in today’s economy, growth alone does not guarantee higher
wages and incomes. We've seen that. But what's also true is we can’t tackle
inequality if the economic pie is shrinking or stagnant. The fact is if you’re
a progressive and you want to help the middle class and the working poor, you’ve
still got to be concerned about competitiveness and productivity and business
confidence that spurs private sector investment.
And that’s why from day one we’ve worked to get the economy growing and
help our businesses hire. And thanks to their resilience and innovation,
they’ve created nearly 8 million new jobs over the past 44 months. And now
we’ve got to grow the economy even faster. And we've got to keep working to
make America a magnet for good, middle-class jobs to replace the ones that we’ve
lost in recent decades -- jobs in manufacturing and energy and infrastructure
and technology.
And that means simplifying our corporate tax code in a way that closes
wasteful loopholes and ends incentives to ship jobs overseas. (Applause.) And
by broadening the base, we can actually lower rates to encourage more companies
to hire here and use some of the money we save to create good jobs rebuilding
our roads and our bridges and our airports, and all the infrastructure our
businesses need.
It means a trade agenda that grows exports and works for the middle class.
It means streamlining regulations that are outdated or unnecessary or too
costly. And it means coming together around a responsible budget -- one that
grows our economy faster right now and shrinks our long-term deficits, one that
unwinds the harmful sequester cuts that haven't made a lot of sense --
(applause) -- and then frees up resources to invest in things like the
scientific research that's always unleashed new innovation and new industries.
When it comes to our budget, we should not be stuck in a stale debate from
two years ago or three years ago. A relentlessly growing deficit of opportunity
is a bigger threat to our future than our rapidly shrinking fiscal deficit.
(Applause.)
So that’s step one towards restoring mobility: making sure our economy is
growing faster. Step two is making sure we empower more Americans with the
skills and education they need to compete in a highly competitive global
economy.
We know that education is the most important predictor of income today, so
we launched a Race to the Top in our schools. We’re supporting states that have
raised standards for teaching and learning. We’re pushing for redesigned high
schools that graduate more kids with the technical training and apprenticeships,
and in-demand, high-tech skills that can lead directly to a good job and a
middle-class life.
We know it’s harder to find a job today without some higher education, so
we’ve helped more students go to college with grants and loans that go farther
than before. We’ve made it more practical to repay those loans. And today,
more students are graduating from college than ever before. We’re also pursuing
an aggressive strategy to promote innovation that reins in tuition costs. We’ve
got lower costs so that young people are not burdened by enormous debt when they
make the right decision to get higher education. And next week, Michelle and I
will bring together college presidents and non-profits to lead a campaign to
help more low-income students attend and succeed in college. (Applause.)
But while higher education may be the surest path to the middle class, it’s
not the only one. So we should offer our people the best technical education in
the world. That’s why we’ve worked to connect local businesses with community
colleges, so that workers young and old can earn the new skills that earn them
more money.
And I’ve also embraced an idea that I know all of you at the Center for
American Progress have championed -- and, by the way, Republican governors in a
couple of states have championed -- and that’s making high-quality preschool
available to every child in America. (Applause.) We know that kids in these
programs grow up likelier to get more education, earn higher wages, form more
stable families of their own. It starts a virtuous cycle, not a vicious one.
And we should invest in that. We should give all of our children that
chance.
And as we empower our young people for future success, the third part of
this middle-class economics is empowering our workers. It’s time to ensure our
collective bargaining laws function as they’re supposed to -- (applause) -- so
unions have a level playing field to organize for a better deal for workers and
better wages for the middle class. It’s time to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act
so that women will have more tools to fight pay discrimination. (Applause.)
It’s time to pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act so workers can’t be
fired for who they are or who they love. (Applause.)
And even though we’re bringing manufacturing jobs back to America, we’re
creating more good-paying jobs in education and health care and business
services; we know that we’re going to have a greater and greater portion of our
people in the service sector. And we know that there are airport workers, and
fast-food workers, and nurse assistants, and retail salespeople who work their
tails off and are still living at or barely above poverty. (Applause.) And
that’s why it’s well past the time to raise a minimum wage that in real terms
right now is below where it was when Harry Truman was in office.
(Applause.)
This shouldn’t be an ideological question. It was Adam Smith, the father
of free-market economics, who once said, “They who feed, clothe, and lodge the
whole body of the people should have such a share of the produce of their own
labor as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged.” And for
those of you who don’t speak old-English -- (laughter) -- let me translate. It
means if you work hard, you should make a decent living. (Applause.) If you
work hard, you should be able to support a family.
Now, we all know the arguments that have been used against a higher minimum
wage. Some say it actually hurts low-wage workers -- businesses will be less
likely to hire them. But there’s no solid evidence that a higher minimum wage
costs jobs, and research shows it raises incomes for low-wage workers and boosts
short-term economic growth. (Applause.)
Others argue that if we raise the minimum wage, companies will just pass
those costs on to consumers. But a growing chorus of businesses, small and
large, argue differently. And already, there are extraordinary companies in
America that provide decent wages, salaries, and benefits, and training for
their workers, and deliver a great product to consumers.
SAS in North Carolina offers childcare and sick leave. REI, a company my
Secretary of the Interior used to run, offers retirement plans and strives to
cultivate a good work balance. There are companies out there that do right by
their workers. They recognize that paying a decent wage actually helps their
bottom line, reduces turnover. It means workers have more money to spend, to
save, maybe eventually start a business of their own.
A broad majority of Americans agree we should raise the minimum wage.
That’s why, last month, voters in New Jersey decided to become the 20th state
to raise theirs even higher. That’s why, yesterday, the D.C. Council voted to
do it, too. I agree with those voters. (Applause.) I agree with those voters,
and I’m going to keep pushing until we get a higher minimum wage for
hard-working Americans across the entire country. It will be good for our
economy. It will be good for our families. (Applause.)
Number four, as I alluded to earlier, we still need targeted programs for
the communities and workers that have been hit hardest by economic change and
the Great Recession. These communities are no longer limited to the inner city.
They’re found in neighborhoods hammered by the housing crisis, manufacturing
towns hit hard by years of plants packing up, landlocked rural areas where young
folks oftentimes feel like they've got to leave just to find a job. There are
communities that just aren’t generating enough jobs anymore.
So we’ve put forward new plans to help these communities and their
residents, because we’ve watched cities like Pittsburgh or my hometown of
Chicago revamp themselves. And if we give more cities the tools to do it -- not
handouts, but a hand up -- cities like Detroit can do it, too. So in a few
weeks, we’ll announce the first of these Promise Zones, urban and rural
communities where we’re going to support local efforts focused on a national
goal -- and that is a child’s course in life should not be determined by the zip
code he’s born in, but by the strength of his work ethic and the scope of his
dreams. (Applause.)
And we're also going to have to do more for the long-term unemployed. For
people who have been out of work for more than six months, often through no
fault of their own, life is a catch-22. Companies won’t give their résumé an
honest look because they’ve been laid off so long -- but they’ve been laid off
so long because companies won’t give their résumé an honest look. (Laughter.)
And that’s why earlier this year, I challenged CEOs from some of America’s best
companies to give these Americans a fair shot. And next month, many of them
will join us at the White House for an announcement about this.
Fifth, we've got to revamp retirement to protect Americans in their golden
years, to make sure another housing collapse doesn’t steal the savings in their
homes. We've also got to strengthen our safety net for a new age, so it doesn’t
just protect people who hit a run of bad luck from falling into poverty, but
also propels them back out of poverty.
Today, nearly half of full-time workers and 80 percent of part-time workers
don’t have a pension or retirement account at their job. About half of all
households don’t have any retirement savings. So we’re going to have to do more
to encourage private savings and shore up the promise of Social Security for
future generations. And remember, these are promises we make to one another.
We don’t do it to replace the free market, but we do it to reduce risk in our
society by giving people the ability to take a chance and catch them if they
fall. One study shows that more than half of Americans will experience poverty
at some point during their adult lives. Think about that. This is not an
isolated situation. More than half of Americans at some point in their lives
will experience poverty.
That’s why we have nutrition assistance or the program known as SNAP,
because it makes a difference for a mother who’s working, but is just having a
hard time putting food on the table for her kids. That’s why we have
unemployment insurance, because it makes a difference for a father who lost his
job and is out there looking for a new one that he can keep a roof over his
kids' heads. By the way, Christmastime is no time for Congress to tell more
than 1 million of these Americans that they have lost their unemployment
insurance, which is what will happen if Congress does not act before they leave
on their holiday vacation. (Applause.)
The point is these programs are not typically hammocks for people to just
lie back and relax. These programs are almost always temporary means for
hardworking people to stay afloat while they try to find a new job or go into
school to retrain themselves for the jobs that are out there, or sometimes just
to cope with a bout of bad luck. Progressives should be open to reforms that
actually strengthen these programs and make them more responsive to a 21st
century economy. For example, we should be willing to look at fresh ideas to
revamp unemployment and disability programs to encourage faster and higher rates
of re-employment without cutting benefits. We shouldn't weaken fundamental
protections built over generations, because given the constant churn in today’s
economy and the disabilities that many of our friends and neighbors live with,
they're needed more than ever. We should strengthen them and adapt them to new
circumstances so they work even better.
But understand that these programs of social insurance benefit all of us,
because we don't know when we might have a run of bad luck. (Applause.) We
don't know when we might lose a job. Of course, for decades, there was one
yawning gap in the safety net that did more than anything else to expose working
families to the insecurities of today’s economy -- namely, our broken health
care system.
That’s why we fought for the Affordable Care Act -- (applause) -- because
14,000 Americans lost their health insurance every single day, and even more
died each year because they didn’t have health insurance at all. We did it
because millions of families who thought they had coverage were driven into
bankruptcy by out-of-pocket costs that they didn't realize would be there. Tens
of millions of our fellow citizens couldn’t get any coverage at all. And Dr.
King once said, "Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the
most shocking and inhumane.”
Well, not anymore. (Applause.) Because in the three years since we passed
this law, the share of Americans with insurance is up, the growth of health care
costs are down to their slowest rate in 50 years. More people have insurance,
and more have new benefits and protections -- 100 million Americans who have
gained the right for free preventive care like mammograms and contraception; the
more than 7 million Americans who have saved an average of $1,200 on their
prescription medicine; every American who won’t go broke when they get sick
because their insurance can’t limit their care anymore.
More people without insurance have gained insurance -- more than 3 million
young Americans who have been able to stay on their parents’ plan, the more than
half a million Americans and counting who are poised to get covered starting on
January 1st, some for the very first time.
And it is these numbers -- not the ones in any poll -- that will ultimately
determine the fate of this law. (Applause.) It's the measurable outcomes in
reduced bankruptcies and reduced hours that have been lost because somebody
couldn't make it to work, and healthier kids with better performance in schools,
and young entrepreneurs who have the freedom to go out there and try a new idea
-- those are the things that will ultimately reduce a major source of inequality
and help ensure more Americans get the start that they need to succeed in the
future.
I have acknowledged more than once that we didn’t roll out parts of this
law as well as we should have. But the law is already working in major ways
that benefit millions of Americans right now, even as we’ve begun to slow the
rise in health care costs, which is good for family budgets, good for federal
and state budgets, and good for the budgets of businesses small and large. So
this law is going to work. And for the sake of our economic security, it needs
to work. (Applause.)
And as people in states as different as California and Kentucky sign up
every single day for health insurance, signing up in droves, they’re proving
they want that economic security. If the Senate Republican leader still thinks
he is going to be able to repeal this someday, he might want to check with the
more than 60,000 people in his home state who are already set to finally have
coverage that frees them from the fear of financial ruin, and lets them afford
to take their kids to see a doctor. (Applause.)
So let me end by addressing the elephant in the room here, which is the
seeming inability to get anything done in Washington these days. I realize we
are not going to resolve all of our political debates over the best ways to
reduce inequality and increase upward mobility this year, or next year, or in
the next five years. But it is important that we have a serious debate about
these issues. For the longer that current trends are allowed to continue, the
more it will feed the cynicism and fear that many Americans are feeling right
now -- that they’ll never be able to repay the debt they took on to go to
college, they’ll never be able to save enough to retire, they’ll never see their
own children land a good job that supports a family.
And that’s why, even as I will keep on offering my own ideas for expanding
opportunity, I’ll also keep challenging and welcoming those who oppose my ideas
to offer their own. If Republicans have concrete plans that will actually
reduce inequality, build the middle class, provide more ladders of opportunity
to the poor, let’s hear them. I want to know what they are. If you don’t think
we should raise the minimum wage, let’s hear your idea to increase people’s
earnings. If you don’t think every child should have access to preschool, tell
us what you’d do differently to give them a better shot.
If you still don’t like Obamacare -- and I know you don’t -- (laughter) --
even though it’s built on market-based ideas of choice and competition in the
private sector, then you should explain how, exactly, you’d cut costs, and cover
more people, and make insurance more secure. You owe it to the American people
to tell us what you are for, not just what you’re against. (Applause.) That
way we can have a vigorous and meaningful debate. That’s what the American
people deserve. That’s what the times demand. It’s not enough anymore to just
say we should just get our government out of the way and let the unfettered
market take care of it -- for our experience tells us that’s just not true.
(Applause.)
Look, I’ve never believed that government can solve every problem or should
-- and neither do you. We know that ultimately our strength is grounded in our
people -- individuals out there, striving, working, making things happen. It
depends on community, a rich and generous sense of community -- that’s at the
core of what happens at THEARC here every day. You understand that turning back
rising inequality and expanding opportunity requires parents taking
responsibility for their kids, kids taking responsibility to work hard. It
requires religious leaders who mobilize their congregations to rebuild
neighborhoods block by block, requires civic organizations that can help train
the unemployed, link them with businesses for the jobs of the future. It
requires companies and CEOs to set an example by providing decent wages, and
salaries, and benefits for their workers, and a shot for somebody who is down on
his or her luck. We know that’s our strength -- our people, our communities,
our businesses.
But government can’t stand on the sidelines in our efforts. Because
government is us. It can and should reflect our deepest values and commitments.
And if we refocus our energies on building an economy that grows for everybody,
and gives every child in this country a fair chance at success, then I remain
confident that the future still looks brighter than the past, and that the best
days for this country we love are still ahead. (Applause.)
Thank you, everybody. God bless you. God bless America.
(Applause.)
END
12:20 P.M. EST
