Topline The President’s vision for the economy prioritizes the middle class and is built on the cornerstones of what it means to be middle class: a good job, a quality education, a home that’s your own, a secure retirement, and affordable health care you can count on when you get sick.
In the President’s speech today, and over the next few months, he will discuss the progress we’ve made, the challenges that remain, and the strategy we need to follow over the long-term to restore middle class security.
We must continue building on the progress we’ve made. Through the hard work and resilience of the American people and the policies the President put in place, we’ve come a long way since the worst days of the financial crisis. The auto industry is thriving, the housing market is coming back, exports are at record highs, our deficits are shrinking, and the private sector has created 7.2 million new jobs in the last 40 months.
There’s more to do. To keep the country moving forward, we need a strategy that makes investments where we need them most to restore the basic bargain that if you work hard, you can get ahead.
President Obama was talking about how the economy works best when it grows from the middle out, not the top down well before he was a national figure. It’s a core philosophy that his driven every decision he has made in office and is the foundation for his plan to move our country forward.
The President vision focuses on the middle class and ensures that every American has the opportunity to achieve these five things”
- A secure job that pays enough to support a middle class life
- Access to a good education that equips one for the job market
- A home that is not at risk of being taken away
- A retirement free of financial anxiety
- Secure health care with decent benefits
The President is also making the case for why we need to rebuild ladders of opportunity for all those Americans striving for the middle class, including the idea that hard works leads to a decent living by raising the federal minimum wage.
Some people inside the Beltway have lost focus on the issues that matter most to middle class families and are busy playing political games. But gridlock comes at a cost and it not only threatens the progress we’ve made, but it also stops us from dealing with some of the biggest challenges of our time like fixing our broken immigration system. This behavior is unacceptable, and the President believes it must stop.
Over the next several weeks, President Obama will give a series of speeches that touch on each cornerstone of middle class life and outline a series of executive, legislative, and private sector actions that can be taken to help restore middle class security.