Obama Calls For A Growing Thriving Middle Class!

President Obama calls for Americans to recommit to time-honored values, to heal the economy with a healthy stock market, bustling main street and a growing thriving middle class. This as opposed to the past Wall Street practices at the expense of working Americans, who were fighting harder and harder just to stay afloat.…
    . . . June

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Obama's call for help
Abby Phillip - POLITICO.com: 

President Barack Obama, in his weekly address to the nation, kicked off the Labor Day holiday weekend with a call to help rebuild the collapsing American middle class.

“This Labor Day, we should recommit ourselves to our time-honored values and to this fundamental truth: to heal our economy, we need more than a healthy stock market; we need bustling main streets and a growing, thriving middle class,” Obama said.

Obama said that the deep, lingering recession has dealt a hard blow to middle-income earners who had once made the American economy 'the envy of the world.” But he added that, even before the current recession began, “the values of hard work and responsibility that build this country had been given short shrift” in the recent past.

“For a decade, middle class families felt the sting of stagnant incomes and declining economic security,” Obama said. “Wall Street firms turned huge profits by taking, in some cases, reckless risks and cutting corners. All of this came at the expense of working Americans, who were fighting harder and harder just to stay afloat .…Ultimately, the house of cards collapsed.”

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Finally, A Bill To RESTORE UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS To Millions

President Obama is still going ahead with lots of reforms. I have to say that I admire his guts. Obviously, there are many things that American citizens are still skeptical about, but he just bulldozes ahead if he thinks it's going to help. This unemployment benefit is one of those really important items. That should help out many thousands of people who are still out of work. This article from the Liberal Examiner examines his efforts

June

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Jobless benefit finally clears the Senate, no thanks to Republicans
July 20, 6:12 PMJacksonville Liberal ExaminerWendie Razon

Finally, a bill to restore unemployment benefits to millions who have been out of work for more than six months has cleared the Senate.

The 60-40 vote came moments after Carte Goodwin, a successor to late West Virginia Democrat Robert Byrd, was sworn in. Goodwin was the critical 60th vote needed to defeat a Republican filibuster that has led to 2.5 million people losing their unemployment.

"It shouldn't take a supermajority to help families afford the bare necessities while unemployment is rising," said Majority Leader Harry Reid after the vote. "It shouldn't take the slimmest of margins to do what is right."

Historically, Congress has never allowed federally-funded extended benefits to lapse when the national unemployment rate has been above 7.2 percent. The current rate is 9.5 percent, and that number is not likely to come down anytime soon.

Maine Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins were the sole Republicans to join Democrats on the 60-40 roll call.

Obama blasted Republicans for halting unemployment checks for people unable to find work. "The same people who didn't have any problem spending hundreds of billions of dollars on tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans are now saying we shouldn't offer relief to middle class Americans," Obama said.

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Do you think the republicans really wanted to keep these benefits from the unemployed? I don't, but darn it, politics shouldn't be played at the expense of people who are out of work. What do you think?

June

Can Obama Really Reform Wall Street?

Barack Obama did indeed sign in a very comprehensive reform bill today - but will it really be enforced? Already the opposition are lining up to criticize the new law. I really hope that sometime soon we give this new president some credit. He really IS trying!

When I read this article this morning I once again thought, "Wow, he may not always be right, but he's not afraid to move forward on something he thinks is right"

What do you think? leave your comments below

June

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President Obama signs Wall Street reform bill

By Carrie Budoff Brown & Kendra Marr | 7/21/10 12:40 PM EDT

Almost two years after a near-collapse of the American economy, President Barack Obama signed into law a historic rewrite of the regulations governing the nation’s financial system, declaring the end to an era of antiquated rules that left Americans vulnerable.

Obama described the law as a triumph for consumers and a necessity for business, saying the financial system “only works – our markets are only free – when there are clear rules and basic safeguards that prevent abuse, that check excess, that ensure that it is more profitable to play by the rules than to game the system.”

“And that is what these reforms are designed to achieve: no more, no less,” Obama said during the ceremony at the Ronald Reagan Building “Because that is how we will ensure that our economy works for consumers, that it works for investors, that it works for financial institutions - that it works for all of us.”

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There are lots of opinions around about this new bill. Tell me what you think

June