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Barack Obama Speaks From Galesburg, Illinois

Aired July 24, 2013 - 13:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: 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)

So...

(UNKNOWN): (OFF-MIKE)

OBAMA: I appreciate that.

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That's what that's about. That's what this is about.

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OBAMA: That's what-that's what we've been fighting for. But with this endless parade of distractions and political posturing and phony scandals, Washington's taken its eye off the ball. And I'm here to say: This needs to stop. This needs to stop.

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This-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.

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And as Washington prepares to enter another budget debate, the stakes for our middle class and everybody who's 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.

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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.

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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; a secure retirement even if you're not rich; reducing poverty, reducing inequality; growing opportunity. That's what we need.

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That's what we need.

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That's what we need right now.

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That's what we need to focus on.

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Now-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.

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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.

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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.

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We've got to-we've got to continue to end the war in Afghanistan, rebalance our fight against Al Qaida.

(APPLAUSE) We need to combat climate change. We've got to stand up for civil rights. We've got to stand up for women's rights.

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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.

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That means whatever executive authority I have to help the middle class, I'll use it.

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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.

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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-we can do more. So I'm going to push new initiatives to help more manufacturers bring more jobs back to the United States. 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.

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We want to make sure that-we're going to create strategies to make sure that good jobs in wind and solar, natural gas that are lowering costs and at the same time, reducing dangerous carbon pollution happen right here in the United States.

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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.

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I know there's an old site right here in Galesburg, over on Monmouth Boulevard. Let's put some folks to work.

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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, you know, the...

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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.

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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.

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And, by the way, this isn't a Democratic idea. You know, Republicans built a lot of stuff. This is the land of Lincoln. Lincoln was all about building stuff.

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First Republican president. 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.

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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 folks who have the skills and the talents they need, they'll reward those folks with good pay. You know, the days when the wages for a worker with a high-school degree could keep pace with 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, you know, worked at a plant, might- 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's always done, which is adapt and pull together and fight back and win. That's what we have to do.

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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.

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And if you think education is expensive, wait until you see how much ignorance costs in the 21st century.

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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 to every 4-year- old in America...

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... 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. So today, for example, as we speak, 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.

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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.

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And-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.

And I'm going to challenge CEOs...

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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's giving their resume an honest look.

(UNKNOWN): (OFF-MIKE)

OBAMA: True-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.

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Everybody's touched by this, including your president, who had a whole bunch of loans he had to pay off. 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.

And this week, we're working with both parties...

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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.

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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 percent, 6 percent, 7 percent a year. We've got to get more out of what we pay for.

OBAMA: 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. And some states are testing new ways to fund college based not just on how many students enroll, but how many of them graduate. How well do 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.

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Now, so you 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, you know, 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 homeownership 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.

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It'll be like a tax cut for families who can refinance. So I'm also acting on my own to cut red tape for responsible families who want to get a mortgage but the bank's 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 homeownership in this country. But along with homeownership, the fourth cornerstone of what it means to be middle class in this country is a secure retirement. And...

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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.

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And if Congress is looking for a bipartisan place to get started, I should just say they-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.

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Good job. Good education for your kids. Home of your own. Secure retirement. Fifth, I'm going to keep focusing on health care, 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.

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We're going to implement it.

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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 that 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 pre-existing condition, if you look at this auditorium, about half of you probably have a pre-existing 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 pre- existing condition. That's what the Affordable Care Act does.

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That's what it does.

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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. I mean, 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 gentleman who just said his daughter's 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, for all those folks, 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.

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Now, finally, as we work to strengthen these cornerstones of middle- class security-a 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.

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There are a lot of folks who are still struggling out here. Too many people in poverty. You know, 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's going to do something for you. 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.