[NEWS.INVESTORS] President Obama's weekly remarksHi, everybody. Our top priority as a nation, and my top priority as President, must be doing everything we can to reignite the engine of America's growth: a rising, thriving middle class. That's our North Star. That must drive every decision we make.
Now, yesterday, we learned that our businesses created 95,000 new jobs last month. That's about 500,000 new jobs this year, and nearly 6.5 million new jobs over the past three years.
Eight months remaining in the year, including this month, works out to 62,500 jobs a month to add up to 500,000. 6.5 million jobs over the past three years (36 months) works out to 180,555 and a half jobs per month. The unemployment rate remains 7.8%. The Bureau of Labor Statistics gives the unemployment rate in January, 2009, when Champ took over, as 7.6%. I'm not a statistician, but if the rate was 7.6% in January, 2009, and the rate to day is 7.8%, that would suggest a .2% net loss of jobs, wouldn't it? From what I can see, the .2% net loss rings a lot truer than 6.5 million new jobs created. Perhaps he means that 6.5 million jobs were churned, with one person leaving and another "job created" be somebody else taking his place.
But we've got more work to do to get the economy growing faster, so that everybody who wants a job can find one. And that means we need fewer self-inflicted wounds from Washington, like the across-the-board spending cuts that are already hurting many communities -- cuts that economists predict will cost our economy hundreds of thousands of jobs this year.
How much would be saved by shutting down PBS? Department of Education? EPA? DEA?
If we want to keep rebuilding this economy on a stronger, sturdier foundation for growth -- growth that creates good, middle-class jobs -- we need to make smarter choices.
This week, I'll send a budget to Congress that will help do just that -- a fiscally-responsible blueprint for middle-class jobs and growth.
For years, an argument in Washington has raged between reducing our deficits at all costs, and making the investments we need to grow the economy.
There should be a gin chugging game where you have to drink every time a politician says "investment." If I invest my money I expect to make a profit. We've been "investing" in a federal Department Housing and Urban Development for years. Have our cities gotten any better? In those few that have, has it been due to HUD? How has the Department of Homeland Security improved anything? Has education gotten any better since the inception of the Department of Education? Couldn't we at least do away with one of them?
My budget puts that argument to rest. Because we don't have to choose between these goals -- we can do both.
"That's right, ladies and gentlemen! We can eat pie and lose weight!"
After all, as we saw in the 1990s, nothing reduces deficits faster than a growing economy.
My budget will reduce our deficits not with aimless, reckless spending cuts that hurt students and seniors and middle-class families -- but through the balanced approach that the American people prefer, and the investments that a growing economy demands.
Now, the truth is, our deficits are already shrinking. That's a fact. I've already signed more than $2.5 trillion in deficit reduction into law, and my budget will reduce our deficits by nearly $2 trillion more, without harming the recovery. That surpasses the goal of $4 trillion in deficit reduction that many economists believe will stabilize our finances.
We'll make the tough reforms required to strengthen Medicare for the future, without undermining the rock-solid guarantee at its core. And we'll enact commonsense tax reform that includes closing wasteful tax loopholes for the wealthy and well-connected -- loopholes like the ones that can allow a billionaire to pay a lower tax rate than his or her secretary.
