Weekly
Address: The President’s Budget Ensures Opportunity for All Hard-Working
Americans
The White House
April 5, 2014
Hi, everybody.
Today, our economy is growing and
our businesses are consistently generating new jobs. But decades-long trends still threaten the
middle class. While those at the top are
doing better than ever, too many Americans are working harder than ever, but
feel like they can’t get ahead.
That’s why the budget I sent
Congress earlier this year is built on the idea of opportunity for all. It will grow the middle class and shrink the
deficits we’ve already cut in half since I took office.
It’s an opportunity agenda with
four goals. Number one is creating more good jobs that pay good wages. Number
two is training more Americans with the skills to fill those jobs. Number three
is guaranteeing every child access to a great education. And number four is making work pay – with
wages you can live on, savings you can retire on, and health care that’s there
for you when you need it.
This week, the Republicans in
Congress put forward a very different budget.
And it does just the opposite: it shrinks opportunity and makes it
harder for Americans who work hard to get ahead.
The Republican budget begins by
handing out massive tax cuts to households making more than $1 million a
year. Then, to keep from blowing a hole
in the deficit, they’d have to raise taxes on middle-class families with
kids. Next, their budget forces deep
cuts to investments that help our economy create jobs, like education and
scientific research.
Now, they won’t tell you where
these cuts will fall. But compared to my
budget, if they cut everything evenly, then within a few years, about 170,000
kids will be cut from early education programs.
About 200,000 new mothers and kids will be cut off from programs to help
them get healthy food. Schools across
the country will lose funding that supports 21,000 special education
teachers. And if they want to make
smaller cuts to one of these areas, that means larger cuts in others.
Unsurprisingly, the Republican
budget also tries to repeal the Affordable Care Act – even though that would
take away health coverage from the more than seven million Americans who’ve
done the responsible thing and signed up to buy health insurance. And for good measure, their budget guts the
rules we put in place to protect the middle class from another financial crisis
like the one we’ve had to fight so hard to recover from.
Policies that benefit a fortunate
few while making it harder for working Americans to succeed are not what we
need right now. Our economy doesn’t grow
best from the top-down; it grows best from the middle-out. That’s what my opportunity agenda does – and
it’s what I’ll keep fighting for.
Thanks. And have a great weekend. |
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