Obama Invokes Teddy, Pushes Congress To Pursue Fairness

By Adrianna McGinley

President Obama called on Congress Tuesday to channel the policies of former President Theodore Roosevelt to bring the country out of recession and keep the “American dream” alive for middle-class Americans.

“At the turn of the last century, when a nation of farmers was transitioning to become the world’s industrial giant, we had to decide: would we settle for a country where most of the new railroads and factories were controlled by a few giant monopolies that kept prices high and wages low? Would we allow our citizens and even our children to work ungodly hours in conditions that were unsafe and unsanitary? Would we restrict education to the privileged few? Because some people thought massive inequality and exploitation was just the price of progress,” Obama said during remarks in Osawatomie, Kansas. “Theodore Roosevelt disagreed.”

“He believed then what we know is true today, that the free market is the greatest force for economic progress in human history,” Obama added. “But Roosevelt also knew that the free market has never been a free license to take whatever you want from whoever you can.”

Obama said Roosevelt was called a radical, socialist and communist for his progressive ideas, but reminded his audience that those ideas were what eventually brought the country out of depression. According to Obama, Roosevelt faced the same skepticism that exists today from “a certain crowd in Washington” who claim the market would “take care of everything…if only we cut more regulations and cut more taxes.”

These critics, Obama said, praise the “trickle-down” theory; a theory he believes lacks what the country needs.

“It’s never worked,” he said. “It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It’s not what led to the incredible post-war boom of the 50s and 60s.”

Obama said that a child born into poverty in the years following World War II had a 50 percent chance of reaching the middle class and in 1980 their chance dropped to 40 percent. Today, he said, their chance has fallen to just one in three.

“The idea that those children might not have a chance to climb out of that situation and back into the middle class, no matter how hard they work? That’s inexcusable. It’s wrong. It flies in the face of everything we stand for,” Obama said.

“This isn’t just another political debate. This is the defining issue of our time. This is a make or break moment for the middle class, and all those who are fighting to get into the middle class.”

Obama called on Congress to pass comprehensive, long-term tax reform, consumer protection measures and support for higher education to bring the U.S. back to prosperity.

“In this economy, a higher education is the surest route to the middle class… We shouldn’t be making it harder to afford college, we should be a country where everyone has the chance to go.”

Obama pushed for an extension of the payroll tax and unemployment benefits to aid struggling middle class families immediately but said “we have to rethink our tax system more fundamentally” in the long term.

“We have to ask ourselves: Do we want to make the investments we need in things like education, and research, and high-tech manufacturing? Or do we want to keep in place the tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans in our country? Because we can’t afford to do both. That’s not politics. That’s just math,” Obama said.

The president called out Republicans for continuing to defend the Bush-era tax cuts and criticized his conservative colleagues for refusing to ask millionaires to return to Clinton-era tax rates.

When Clinton proposed tax increases on wealthy Americans, Obama said, there were fears it would “kill jobs and lead to another recession” but instead,  nearly 23 million jobs were created and the deficit was eliminated.

“I’m here to reaffirm my deep conviction that we are greater together than we are on our own,” Obama said. “I believe that this country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share, and when everyone plays by the same rules. Those aren’t Democratic or Republican values; 1 percent values or 99 percent values. They’re American values, and we have to reclaim them.”

Voters Voice Concerns To Obama During Townhall Event

President Barack Obama took some pointed questions on Monday from townhall participants clearly worried about the precarious state of the nation’s economy.

The roughly hour-long event was attended by small business owners, students, union leaders and others, some supporters of Obama, some not. It was held at the Newseum, a museum dedicated to journalism located just blocks from the White House, and was broadcasted live with no commercial interruption by the business news channel CNBC.

Though questions ranged from taxes, to China, to the rise of the Tea Party, the struggling economy was the central focus. Obama used the opportunity to take a swipe at his predecessor in office, telling participants that while recovery has been slow to develop, it will take time to reverse the effects of policies passed under the Bush administration.

“As a consequence of reckless decisions that had been made, the economy was on the verge of collapse. Those same businesses now are profitable; the financial markets are stabilized,” he said. “The only thing that we’ve said is that we’ve got to make sure that we’re not doing some of the same things that we were doing in the past that got into this mess in the first place.”

The president reiterated his desire to see Congress extend a series of tax cuts for the middle class, but said it would be “irresponsible” to continue providing relief to “millionaires and billionaires.”

“I can’t give tax cuts to the top 2 percent of Americans…and lower the deficit at the same time,” he said.

One questioner, a woman who voted for Obama in 2008, told the president she was tired of defending him, and asked whether living off “hot dogs and beans” represented her new “reality.” The president responded that everything is not “where it needs to be,” but assured her that the nation is “moving in the right direction.”

When asked by another participant whether the ‘American Dream’ was dead, the president said “Absolutely not…We are still the country that billions of people in the world look to and aspire to.”

Obama was also asked about his handling of the bank collapse, including a question from an actual Wall Street executive who said he attended Harvard with the president. Obama acknowledged that he has beaten up on some firms since he took office, but justified it by telling the audience that “folks on Main Street feel like Wall Street has beaten up on them.”

The president argued that despite his actions to boost government regulation of the financial sector, he does not begrudge companies that profit, and has been cautious not to stifle the market.

“It’s very hard to find evidence of anything we’ve done that’s designed to squash business as opposed to promote business,” he said. “What I’ve tried to do is just try to be practical.”

Boehner Pitches Two-Year Tax Freeze, Reduced Spending

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) proposed on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Wednesday a two-year tax freeze on current U.S. tax rates, including the Bush tax cuts.

Boehner appeared on the show preluding remarks by President Barack Obama where he is scheduled to speak in the lawmaker’s hometown of Cleveland, Ohio pitching a trio of his own economic proposals. 

The Minority Leader called on the White House as being “out of touch” with the American people and proposed a reduction in next year’s spending to 2008 levels to compliment his tax freeze pitch. 

“If we’re able to do this together, I think we’ll show the American people that we understand what’s going on in the country and we’ll be able to get our economy moving again and get jobs growing in America,” Boehner said.

Boehner’s nationally televised remarks come on the heels of a New York Times Op-Ed submitted by Obama’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget Peter Orszag. In his article, Orszag endorsed the extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 2% of Americans for two years before letting them expire. Orszag said that letting the tax cuts expire too soon could deal a heavy blow to an already struggling jobs market.

“Let’s continue the tax cuts for two years but end them for good in 2013,” Orszag said.

Orszag Backs Bush Tax Cuts Extension

Former Director of the Office of Management and Budget Peter Orzag said Tuesday that Congress should work towards extending the Bush tax cuts for two years, at which point he said they end, permanently.

In his first New York Times column, Orszag said he believes the best way to handle the country’s short term jobs problem and a growing deficit for the long term is to temporarily extend the tax cuts set to expire this year.

“In the face of the dueling deficits, the best approach is a compromise: extend the tax cuts for two years and then end them altogether,” Orzag wrote.

The former OMB Director also said he believes that higher taxes would reduce consumer spending, severely affecting the demand for products across the boards. While permanently extending these tax cuts would increase the deficit by nearly $3 trillion over the next ten years, Orszag argued that the tax cuts are simply not affordable and, by letting them expire, an already stalled jobs market will be dealt a heavy blow, worsening its status.

Orszag said this is not a time for partisan politics, but rather a time where Congress and the administration need to work together to solve the “One Nation, Two Deficits” problem facing the country.

“Both approaches lock us into a budget scenario out of which there are few politically plausible routes of escape,” Orszag said. “Senate Democrats and Republicans almost never come together anymore, [and] this month, they should fight the dual deficits rather than each other. Let’s continue the tax cuts for two years but end them for good in 2013.”

New GDP Numbers Show Slowed Rate Of Growth

According to statistics released Friday by the U.S. Department of Commerce, the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew at a rate of 3.2% during the first quarter of this year. Yet while some are celebrating the news, the figure represents a drop-off since the last quarter of 2009, when real GDP increased 5.6%. Still, President Barack Obama struck an upbeat tone when he addressed reporters in the White House Rose Garden this morning.

“What this number means is that our economy, as a whole, is in a much better place than it was one year ago...We’re heading in the right direction, we’re moving forward. Our economy is stronger, that economic heartbeat is stronger,” he said, flanked by a pair of CEO’s of clean energy companies who have been able to increase domestic payroll thanks to Recovery Act awards.

In reality, however, the statistics show the country’s economy remains in less-than great shape. During the early months of 2010 businesses built up inventories at a slower rate than the previous quarter, national exports decelerated and housing sales remained sluggish. In addition, prices of goods increased slightly while personal real income levels flat lined. Although consumer spending increased, some experts attribute this uptick to the fact that many Americans who filed taxes early capitalized on their returns.

Based on today’s numbers, the economic forecast for the future isn’t too bright, said Peter Morici, an economist and professor at the University of Maryland’s Robert Smith School of Business.

“Although the inventory rebuild has begun, the pace is slow reflecting tepid sustainable demand for U.S. goods and services...Looking ahead, data are not encouraging. After such a long and damaging recession, we should expect several quarters of 5 percent growth but poor and mistargeted economic policies will force Americans to settle for less.”