Remarks of President Barack Obama on the Economy—As Prepared for Delivery

Milwaukee Laborfest
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

As Prepared for Delivery—

Hello, Milwaukee! Thank you to the Milwaukee Area Labor Council and to all of my brothers
and sisters in the AFL-CIO for inviting me to spend this day with you – a day that belongs to the
working men and women of America.

I want to acknowledge your outstanding national president, a man who knows that a strong
economy needs a strong labor movement: Rich Trumka; Dave Newby, president of the
Wisconsin AFL-CIO; and our host, your Milwaukee Area Labor Council Secretary-Treasurer,
Sheila Cochran, who I hear has a birthday tomorrow. I’m proud to be here with our Secretary
of Labor, a daughter of union members, Hilda Solis; and our Secretary of Transportation, Ray
LaHood. And let’s hear it for the folks at the forefront of every fight for Wisconsin’s working men
and women – Senator Herb Kohl; Congresswoman Gwen Moore; and your outstanding mayor,
Tom Barrett. Your other great senator, Russ Feingold, was here with you earlier, standing with
you and your families just like he always has, but he had to head to his hometown of Janesville
to participate in their Labor Day parade.

So it is good to be back in Milwaukee. Of course, this isn’t my first time at Laborfest. I stood
right here with you two years ago, when I was still a candidate for this office. During that
campaign, we talked about how, for years, the values of hard work and responsibility that built
this country had been given short shrift, and how that was slowly hollowing out our middle
class. About how some on Wall Street took reckless risks and cut corners to turn huge profits,
while working Americans were fighting harder and harder just to stay afloat. And about how the
decks were too often stacked in favor of the special interests and against working Americans.

What we knew, even then, was that these years would be some of the most difficult in our
history. And then, two weeks later, the bottom fell out of the economy. Middle-class families
suddenly found themselves swept up in the worst recession in our lifetimes.

So the problems facing working families are nothing new. But they are more serious than ever.
And that makes our cause more urgent than ever. For generations, it was the great American
middle class that made our economy the envy of the world. It’s got to be that way again.

It was folks like you, after all, who forged that middle class. It was working men and women
who made the twentieth century the American century. It was the labor movement that helped
secure so much of what we take for granted today – the 40-hour work week, the minimum
wage, family leave, health insurance, Social Security, Medicare, retirement plans, those
cornerstones of middle class security that all bear the union label.

And it was that greatest of generations that built America into the greatest force for prosperity,
opportunity and freedom the world has ever known. Americans like my grandfather, who went
off to war just boys, returned home men, and traded one uniform and set of responsibilities for
another. Americans like my grandmother, who rolled up their sleeves and worked in factories
on the home front. When the war was over, they studied under the GI Bill; bought homes under
the FHA; raised families buttressed by good jobs that paid good wages with good benefits.

It was through my grandparents’ experience that I was brought up to believe that anything is
possible in America. But they also knew the feeling when that opportunity is pulled out from
under you. They would tell me about seeing their fathers or uncles losing jobs during the
depression; how it wasn’t just the loss of a paycheck that stung. It was the blow to their dignity;
their sense of self-worth. I’ll bet a lot of us have seen people changed after a long bout of
unemployment; how it can wear down even the strongest spirits.

So my grandparents taught me early on that a job is about more than a paycheck, as important
as that is. A job is about waking up every day with a sense of purpose, and going to bed each
night fulfilled. A job is about meeting your responsibilities to yourself, to your family, to your
community. I carried that lesson with me all those years ago when I got my start fighting for
men and women on the South Side of Chicago after their local steel plant shut down. I carried
that lesson with me through my time as a state senator and a U.S. Senator. I carry that lesson
with me today.

And I know that there are folks right here in Milwaukee and all across America who are going
through these kinds of struggles. Eight million Americans lost their jobs in this recession. And
while we’ve had eight straight months of private sector job growth, the new jobs haven’t been
coming fast enough. Now, the plain truth is, there’s no silver bullet or quick fix to the problem.
Even when I was running for this office, we knew it would take time to reverse the damage of a
decade’s worth of policies that saw a few folks prosper while the middle class kept falling behind
– and it will take more time than any of us wants to dig out of the hole created by this economic
crisis.

But on this Labor Day, there are two things I want you to know, Milwaukee. Number one: I’m
going to keep fighting, every single day, to turn this economy around; to put our people back to
work; to renew the American Dream for your families and for future generations.

Number two – and this I believe with every fiber of my being: America cannot have a strong,
growing economy without a strong, growing middle class, and the chance for everybody, no
matter how humble their beginnings, to join that middle class. A middle class built on the idea
that if you work hard and live up to your responsibilities, you can get ahead – and enjoy some
basic guarantees in life. A good job that pays a good wage. Health care that’ll be there when
you get sick. A secure retirement even if you’re not rich. An education that’ll give our kids a
better life than we had. These are simple ideas. American ideas.

I was thinking about this last week. On the day I announced the end to our combat mission in
Iraq, I spent some time, as I often do, with our soldiers and veterans. This new generation of
troops coming home from Iraq has earned its place alongside that greatest generation. Like
them, they have the skills and training and drive to move America’s economy forward once
more. And from the time I took office, we’ve been investing in new care, new opportunity, and
a new commitment to their service that’s worthy of their sacrifice. But they’re coming home
to an economy hit by recession deeper than any we’ve seen. And the question is, how do we
create the same kind of middle class opportunity my grandparents’ generation came home
to? How do we build our economy on the same kind of strong, stable foundation for growth?

Well, anyone who thinks we can move this economy forward with a few doing well at the top,
hoping it’ll trickle down to working folks running faster and faster just to keep up – they just
haven’t studied our history. We didn’t become the most prosperous country in the world by
rewarding greed and recklessness. We didn’t come this far by letting special interests run
wild. We didn’t do it by just gambling and chasing paper profits on Wall Street. We did it
by producing goods we could sell; we did it with sweat and effort and innovation. We did it
by investing in the people who built this country from the ground up – workers, and middle-
class families, and small business owners. We did it by out-working, out-educating, and out-
competing everyone else.

Milwaukee, that’s what we’re going to do again. That’s what’s been at the heart of all our
efforts: building our economy on a new foundation so that our middle class doesn’t just survive
this crisis – but thrives once we emerge. And over the last two years, that’s meant taking on
some powerful interests who had been dominating the agenda in Washington for too long.

That’s why we passed financial reform that provides new accountability and tough oversight of
Wall Street; reform that will stop credit card companies from gouging you with hidden fees and
unfair rate hikes; reform that ends the era of taxpayer bailouts for Wall Street once and for all.

That’s why we eliminated tens of billions of dollars in wasteful taxpayer subsidies to big banks
that provide student loans. We’re using those savings to put a college education within reach
for working families.

That’s why we passed health insurance reform that will make coverage affordable; reform that
ends the indignity of insurance companies jacking up your premiums at will or denying you
coverage just because you get sick; reform that shifts control from them to you.

That’s why we’re making it easier for workers to save for retirement, with new ways of saving
your tax refunds, a simpler system for enrolling in plans like 401(k)s, and fighting to strengthen
Social Security for the future. And to those who may still run for office planning to privatize
Social Security, let me be clear: as long as I’m President, I’ll fight every effort to take the
retirement savings of a generation of Americans and hand it over to Wall Street. Not on my
watch.

That’s why we’ve given tax cuts to small business owners. Tax cuts to clean energy
companies. A tax cut to 95 percent of working Americans, just like I promised you on the
campaign. And instead of giving tax breaks to corporations to create jobs overseas, we’re
cutting taxes for companies that put our people to work here at home.

That’s why we’re investing in growth industries like clean energy and manufacturing. And
you’ve got leaders here like Tom Barrett and Jim Doyle who have been fighting to bring those
jobs to Milwaukee and to Wisconsin. Because we want to see the solar panels and wind
turbines and electric cars of tomorrow manufactured here. We don’t just want to buy stuff made
elsewhere; we want to grow our exports so the world buys products that say “Made in America.”

Because there are no better workers than American workers, and I’ll place my bet on you any
day of the week. When the naysayers said we should just let the American auto industry vanish
and take hundreds of thousands of jobs down with it, we said we’d stand by them if they made
the tough choices necessary to compete once again – and today, that industry is on the way
back.

Now, another thing we’ve done is make sound and long-overdue investments in upgrading our
outdated and inefficient national infrastructure. We’re not just talking new roads, bridges, dams
and levees; but also a smart electric grid and the broadband internet and high-speed rail lines
required to compete in the 21st century economy. We’re talking investments in tomorrow that
are creating hundreds of thousands of private sector jobs today.

It was because of these investments, and the tens of thousands of projects they spurred all
over the country, that the battered construction sector actually grew last month for the first time
in a long time. Still, nearly one in five construction workers are unemployed. And it doesn’t do
anybody any good when so many American workers have been idled for months, even years, at
a time when there is so much of America to rebuild.

That’s why, today, I am announcing a new plan for rebuilding and modernizing America’s roads,
rails and runways for the long-term.

Over the next six years, we are going to rebuild 150,000 miles of our roads – enough to circle
the world six times. We’re going to lay and maintain 4,000 miles of our railways – enough
to stretch coast-to-coast. We’re going to restore 150 miles of runways and advance a next
generation air-traffic control system to reduce travel time and delays for American travelers –
something I think folks across the political spectrum could agree on.

This is a plan that will be fully paid for and will not add to the deficit over time – we’re going
to work with Congress to see to that. It sets up an Infrastructure Bank to leverage federal
dollars and focus on the smartest investments. It will continue our strategy to build a national
high-speed rail network that reduces congestion, travel times, and harmful emissions. It will
cut waste and bureaucracy by consolidating and collapsing more than 100 different, often
duplicative programs. And it will change the way Washington spends your tax dollars; reforming
the haphazard and patchwork way we fund and maintain our infrastructure to focus less on
wasteful earmarks and outdated formulas, and more on competition and innovation that gives
us the best bang for the buck.

All of this will not only create jobs now, but will make our economy run better over the long haul.
It’s a plan that history tells us can and should attract bipartisan support. It’s a plan that says
even in the still-smoldering aftermath of the worst recession in our lifetimes, America can act to
shape our own destiny, to move this country forward, to leave our children something better –
something lasting.
So these are the things we’ve been working for. These are some of the victories that you
helped us achieve. And we’re not done. We’ve got a lot more progress to make. And I believe
we will.

But there are some folks in Washington who see things differently. When it comes to just about
everything we’ve done to strengthen the middle class and rebuild our economy, almost every
Republican in Congress said no. Even where we usually agree, they say no. They think it’s
better to score political points before an election than actually solve problems. So they said no
to help for small businesses. No to middle-class tax cuts. No to unemployment insurance. No
to clean energy jobs. No to making college affordable. No to reforming Wall Street. Even as
we speak, these guys are saying no to cutting more taxes for small business owners. I mean,
come on! Remember when our campaign slogan was “Yes We Can?” These guys are running
on “No, We Can’t,” and proud of it. Really inspiring, huh?

To steal a line from our old friend, Ted Kennedy: what is it about working men and women that
they find so offensive?

When we passed a bill earlier this summer to help states save the jobs of hundreds of
thousands of teachers, nurses, police officers and firefighters that were about to be laid off, they
said “no” to that, too. In fact, the Republican who’s already planning to take over as Speaker of
the House dismissed them as “government jobs” that weren’t worth saving. Not worth saving?
These are the people who teach our kids. Who keep our streets safe. Who put their lives on
the line for our own. I don’t know about you, but I think those jobs are worth saving.

We made sure that bill wouldn’t add to the deficit, either. We paid for it by finally closing
a ridiculous tax loophole that actually rewarded corporations for shipping jobs and profits
overseas. It let them write off the taxes they pay foreign governments – even when they don’t
pay taxes here. How do you like that – middle class families footing tax breaks for corporations
that create jobs somewhere else! Even a lot of America’s biggest corporations agreed the
loophole should be closed, that it wasn’t fair – but the man with the plan to be Speaker is
already aiming to open it up again.

Bottom line is, these guys refuse to give up on the economic philosophy they peddled for most
of the last decade. You know that philosophy: you cut taxes for millionaires and billionaires; you
cut rules for special interests; you cut working folks like you loose to fend for yourselves. They
called it the ownership society. What it really boiled down to was: if you couldn’t find a job, or
afford college, or got dropped by your insurance company – you’re on your own.

Well, that philosophy didn’t work out so well for working folks. It didn’t work out so well for our
country. All it did was rack up record deficits and result in the worst economic crisis since the
Great Depression.

I’m not bringing this up to re-litigate the past; I’m bringing it up because I don’t want to re-live
the past. It would be one thing if Republicans in Washington had new ideas or policies to offer;
if they said, you know, we’ve learned from our mistakes. We’ll do things differently this time.
But that’s not what they’re doing. When the leader of their campaign committee was asked
on national television what Republicans would do if they took over Congress, he actually said
they’d follow “the exact same agenda” as they did before I took office. The exact same agenda.

So basically, they’re betting that between now and November, you’ll come down with a case of
amnesia. They think you’ll forget what their agenda did to this country. They think you’ll just
believe that they’ve changed. These are the folks whose policies helped devastate our middle
class and drive our economy into a ditch. And now they’re asking you for the keys back.

Do you want to give them the keys back? Me neither. And do you know why? Because they
don’t know how to drive! At a time when we’re just getting out of the ditch, they’d pop it in
reverse, let the special interests ride shotgun, and hit the gas, careening right back into that
ditch.

Well, I refuse to go backwards, Milwaukee. And that’s the choice America faces this fall. Do we
go back to the policies of the past? Or do we move forward? I say we move forward. America
always moves forward. And we are going to keep moving forward today.

Let me just close by saying this. I know these are difficult times. I know folks are worried,
and there’s still a lot of hurt out here. I hear about it when I spend time in towns like this; I
read about it in your letters at night. And when times are tough, it can be easy to give in to
cynicism and fear; doubt and division – to set our sights lower and settle for something less.

But that is not who we are. That is not the country I know. We do not give up. We do not quit.
We are a people that faced down war and depression; great challenges and great threats; and
lit the way for the rest of the world. Whenever times have seemed at their worst, Americans
have been at their best. Because it is in those times when we roll up our sleeves and remember
that we will rise or fall together – as one nation, and one people. That’s the spirit that started
the labor movement. The idea that alone, we are weak. Divided, we fall. But united, we are
strong. That’s why we call them unions. That’s why we call this the United States of America.

Milwaukee, that’s the case I am going to make across the country this fall – yours. And I am
asking for your help. If you are willing to join me, and Tom Barrett, and Gwen Moore, and
Russ Feingold, we can strengthen our middle class and make our economy work for working
Americans again. We can restore the American Dream and deliver it safely to our children.
That’s how we built the last American century. That’s how we’ll build the next. We don’t believe
in the words “No, we can’t.” We are Americans, and in times of great challenge, we push
forward with an unyielding faith that we can. Yes, we can. Thank you, God Bless You and the
work you do, and God Bless the United States of America.