My grandparents served during World War II. He was a soldier in Patton's army; she was a worker on a bomber assembly line. And together, they shared the optimism of a nation that triumphed over the Great Depression and over fascism. They believed in an America where hard work paid off, and responsibility was rewarded, and anyone could make it if they tried – no matter who you were, no matter where you came from, no matter how you started out.
So far so good, sounds great. We Americans like that... hard work pays off.
Today, we're still home to the world's most productive workers. We're still home to the world's most innovative companies. But for most Americans, the basic bargain that made this country great has eroded. Long before the recession hit, hard work stopped paying off for too many people. Fewer and fewer of the folks who contributed to the success of our economy actually benefited from that success. Those at the very top grew wealthier from their incomes and their investments – wealthier than ever before. But everybody else struggled with costs that were growing and paycheques that weren't – and too many families found themselves racking up more and more debt just to keep up.
Ok, slow up a little. I'll let the "basic bargain" thing go. Ok, no, I can't. There was never any bargain, there was only capitalism, Mr. President. You're already making stuff up three paragraphs in.
As for those who contributed, you mean people who worked for an employer according to an agreement to do so for a certain rate of pay? But wait, when you say fewer and fewer actually benefited, what does this mean? They stopped getting paid according to the agreement they had with their employer? Then they would have stopped working. Do you mean that they didn't share equally in the profits the same as the employer? Well, what exactly is it that would make you think they should? Was it part of their employment agreement? If it was not, why would you even say this? I know, I know, it's NOT class warfare. The truth of the matter is that income levels have generally kept up with inflation. (We'll come back to this later.) In other words, I get paid today the equivalent of what I'd have gotten ten years ago. Where I'm from, we call that fair.
And the wealthy got wealthier than ever before off their incomes and investments. I know a really wealthy guy who's gotten crazy wealthy off his income and investments. He's never had a real job other than being in government, and his entire claim to fame was a few speeches. Since then he's written a few books and become a millionaire. He's been surrounded by people involved in shady deals, hard core Chicago politics and the most outrageous crony capitalism seen in my lifetime. Seems like you really ought to hate that guy...
Now, for many years, credit cards and home equity loans papered over this harsh reality. But in 2008, the house of cards collapsed. We all know the story by now: mortgages sold to people who couldn't afford them, or even sometimes understand them. Banks and investors allowed to keep packaging the risk and selling it off. Huge bets – and huge bonuses – made with other people's money on the line. Regulators who were supposed to warn us about the dangers of all this, but looked the other way or didn't have the authority to look at all.
Uh oh, someone told the truth and tried to make it sound like something else. We all know the story, Mr. President, but you're not telling the back story. The reason for what we're going through today has its roots in the policies of one of your ideological predecessors, the second-worst president in modern times, Jimmy Carter. It is called the Community Reinvestment Act, and it was the beginning of forcing lenders to make loans to people who could not afford them. Did greed eventually become part of the problem? Of course. But the whole thing would never have happened if banks hadn't been forced to create loans they had to hide from their balance sheets by a law created by out of control government. Like everything progressives do when it comes to money, the idea sounds great (after all, who's for discrimination?), the execution is bad and the results have been onerous. And the truth is, regulators had little choice but to look the other way when this thing started; the banks had to make the loans, and they also had to get all that bad debt off their books.
It was wrong. It combined the breathtaking greed of a few with irresponsibility all across the system. And it plunged our economy and the world into a crisis from which we're still fighting to recover. It claimed the jobs and the homes and the basic security of millions of people – innocent, hardworking Americans who had met their responsibilities but were still left holding the bag.
Yes sir, it did. The greed of politicians continuing and worsening these regulations and practices for the sole ultimate purpose of buying votes. I hope you're all ashamed of yourselves. Yeah, I know, you're all beyond shame. Never mind.
But, Osawatomie, this is not just another political debate. This is the defining issue of our time. This is a make-or-break moment for the middle class, and for all those who are fighting to get into the middle class. Because what's at stake is whether this will be a country where working people can earn enough to raise a family, build a modest savings, own a home, secure their retirement. Now, in the midst of this debate, there are some who seem to be suffering from a kind of collective amnesia. After all that's happened, after the worst economic crisis, the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, they want to return to the same practices that got us into this mess. In fact, they want to go back to the same policies that stacked the deck against middle-class Americans for way too many years. And their philosophy is simple: We are better off when everybody is left to fend for themselves and play by their own rules.
Um, what? You know, it's too bad, Mr. President, that you apparently have never spoken to someone whose beliefs on the matter are different than yours with the intention of actually listening and trying to understand the other side. You might actually learn something. By no means whatsoever do we want to go back to what caused this. The idiotic laws you politicians crafted to cause this mess should be rescinded. Banks should never be forced, or even allowed, to lend other people's money to anyone who isn't credit worthy. They should never have to, nor be allowed to repackage debt into instruments whose sole purpose is hiding the toxic nature of their contents. That's not what we idiot conservatives want at all. We want responsibility. And when we say that, we mean that if you can't afford it, you don't get it. And sometimes, it's just too bad, we don't all get what we want, no matter how cleverly we might think we can decorate police cars with our heinies.
Theodore Roosevelt disagreed. He was the Republican son of a wealthy family. He praised what the titans of industry had done to create jobs and grow the economy. He believed then what we know is true today, that the free market is the greatest force for economic progress in human history. It's led to a prosperity and a standard of living unmatched by the rest of the world.
Ah, Theodore Roosevelt. When all else fails, assume the mantle of a former president whose name is respectable but most people today don't really know all that much about. That way you can form the message any way you want. (One of your advisers thinks this is a brilliant strategy, I bet. That guy paid too much for his college education. You got anyone there who's actually had a job outside government and academia?) But better yet, you're praising the free market. That must have been really hard. But that was just what you had to do to get to the next, much more enjoyable paragraph.
But Roosevelt also knew that the free market has never been a free licence to take whatever you can from whomever you can. He understood the free market only works when there are rules of the road that ensure competition is fair and open and honest. And so he busted up monopolies, forcing those companies to compete for consumers with better services and better prices. And today, they still must. He fought to make sure businesses couldn't profit by exploiting children or selling food or medicine that wasn't safe. And today, they still can't.
Yup. And your point would be? No, wait, let me guess. The only way for the free market to be fair is to surround it with rules and regulations so that it's not free to do what you consider the wrong thing, it's only free to do what you consider the right thing. And since you're the arbiter of right, we should trust you to set everything up in our best interests, even if it puts the companies many of us work for out of business. Am I warm? Wanna talk about Obamacare? And when you say "fair and open and honest", you mean like Solyndra, right? In other words, it's fair and open and honest if you get to pick the winners and losers...
Today, over 100 years later, our economy has gone through another transformation. Over the last few decades, huge advances in technology have allowed businesses to do more with less, and it's made it easier for them to set up shop and hire workers anywhere they want in the world. And many of you know firsthand the painful disruptions this has caused for a lot of Americans.
So it's technology's fault that businesses are streaming out of the US to set up shop in places where it's not so costly and they're not hog-tied by over-reaching regulation? You're sure it has nothing to do with that or the high wages and benefits that American union workers have demanded that aren't part of the equation in other parts of the world? What about corporate tax rates, highest in the world, remember? I mean, I know how evil it is, but the primary purpose of a corporation is to make a profit for its shareholders, it is not for it to be some kind of altruistic vehicle that exists to employ citizens and pay them lavishly for services that can be gotten elsewhere for much less. You're thinking of national socialism... you know, fascism and its government-owned corporations. Totally different thing. What exactly did they teach at those fancy colleges you went to anyway?
Factories where people thought they would retire suddenly picked up and went overseas, where workers were cheaper.
Um, yeah. You were surprised by that, weren't you? Or are you just trying to act surprised? Labor unions have spent decades killing the goose that laid the golden eggs and then acting surprised when it died. When you kill stuff you don't get to act surprised when it's dead. I mean, you could, but it's just plain idiotic. Corporations don't spend the money it takes to move operations overseas for no good reason. Regardless what you may think sir, it's not about screwing the union workers. It's about making a profit. And you can't do that when it costs you more than your overseas competition to produce the same product, meaning you have to charge more for it. Again, it seems like you would have learned this stuff at those expensive colleges. I am starting to think you got ripped off.
Steel mills that needed 100 – or 1,000 employees are now able to do the same work with 100 employees, so layoffs too often became permanent, not just a temporary part of the business cycle. And these changes didn't just affect blue-collar workers. If you were a bank teller or a phone operator or a travel agent, you saw many in your profession replaced by ATMs and the internet.
So let me see if I understand this, because it's important. You're saying that technology is bad because it sometimes replaces workers, so... things would be great if we could have just stayed in the 1970s? And, help me out here, are you really complaining about the internet? By orders of magnitude the number of jobs created by the internet outstrips what has been lost in telephone operators and bank tellers (and by the way, I've never been in a bank without tellers, so you're pulling that one out of thin air...) I really wish Americans were as smart as you think they're stupid, sir. Even if we could have split it down the middle you'd never have been elected.
Today, even higher-skilled jobs, like accountants and middle management can be outsourced to countries like China or India.
Yes, because they're cheaper. Is it time to talk about Obamacare yet?
And if you're somebody whose job can be done cheaper by a computer or someone in another country, you don't have a lot of leverage with your employer when it comes to asking for better wages or better benefits, especially since fewer Americans today are part of a union.
Funny that. It's almost like Americans figured out what unions have generally become in this country, and what they almost inevitably end up doing to the job scene in any sector where they are prominent. I mean, I technically have nothing against private sector unions. If corporations will tolerate them, that's up to them; that's capitalism. But when it costs $150,000 a year for one union employee here and $50,000 for two in India, what is a company's motivation for not outsourcing, altruism? Altruism looks awful on a balance sheet. Altruism doesn't pay dividends, and it doesn't convince anyone to invest in a company's stock.
Now, just as there was in Teddy Roosevelt's time, there is a certain crowd in Washington who, for the last few decades, have said, let's respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. "The market will take care of everything," they tell us. If we just cut more regulations and cut more taxes – especially for the wealthy – our economy will grow stronger.
Ah, but there's the problem. You and your gang have the free market in a straight jacket of laws and regulations designed to make it "safe" and "fair". It can't function as a free market. So then when it fails, you rail about how it's failed. I (almost) hate to say this, but a six year old can tell you the answer here. Get the government off the back of the people, and the markets, in this country and maybe things will actually work better. And as far as your "taxes for the wealthy" routine, there are only about 10,000 people left who don't know that you mean small business, and they all just got kicked out of poo-filled parks around the US. Why do you hate small business sir? Most of the employment in this country happens through small business and yet you continue to do your level best to make things harder for small business. Why is that? Imagine a country where taxes were lowered for small business, and they had more money available for crazy things like... hiring more employees. Yeah, I know, pure insanity.
Remember in those years, in 2001 and 2003, Congress passed two of the most expensive tax cuts for the wealthy in history. And what did it get us? The slowest job growth in half a century. Massive deficits that have made it much harder to pay for the investments that built this country and provided the basic security that helped millions of Americans reach and stay in the middle class – things like education and infrastructure, science and technology, Medicare and social security.
There's a little bit of truth in that. Ok, wait, no, there isn't, it's completely false and you know it. Liar, liar, $600 pants on fire.
Look at the statistics. In the last few decades, the average income of the top 1% has gone up by more than 25% to $1.2m per year. I'm not talking about millionaires, people who have a million dollars. I'm saying people who make a million dollars every single year. For the top one hundredth of 1%, the average income is now $27m per year. The typical CEO who used to earn about 30 times more than his or her worker now earns 110 times more. And yet, over the last decade the incomes of most Americans have actually fallen by about 6%.
There actually is some small piece of truth here. Under your watch, incomes have gone down some for most of us, partly on average due to underemployment but also individually because of the inflation and high fuel prices your administration has caused with its reckless fiscal policies. And yes, I know, food and fuel aren't counted in inflation calculations, and so by that reckoning there hasn't been much inflation. But out here where we live, as people who actually pay for food and fuel, I assure you that there is plenty of inflation and it is effectively gutting our income. So yeah, the incomes of most Americans has effectively dropped at least 6%, seems like more. Thanks for all you're doing!
But there's an even more fundamental issue at stake. This kind of gaping inequality gives lie to the promise that's at the very heart of America: that this is a place where you can make it if you try.
There's that promise or deal thing again. Can you please show me that in the founding documents Mr. President? I'm sure it's there, I just can't remember seeing it.
So what does that mean for restoring middle-class security in today's economy? Well, it starts by making sure that everyone in America gets a fair shot at success. The truth is we'll never be able to compete with other countries when it comes to who's best at letting their businesses pay the lowest wages, who's best at busting unions, who's best at letting companies pollute as much as they want. That's a race to the bottom that we can't win, and we shouldn't want to win that race. Those countries don't have a strong middle class. They don't have our standard of living.
So much fail. Everyone gets a fair shot at success. Please define in 25 words or less, the terms "fair", "shot", and "success". These are all subjective terms. Obviously you have determined to be the arbiter of fair in the United States, so please define it for us so we know what you have in mind.
The race we want to win, the race we can win is a race to the top – the race for good jobs that pay well and offer middle-class security.
Make it easier and cheaper to do business here in America than anyplace else, and you'll get exactly that. It's so simple that you won't consider it, because simple can't be right and sophisticated is the only thing you think makes sense. Sometimes the answer really is simple. As hard as it may be to believe, sometimes sophistication can be its own worst enemy.
Today, manufacturers and other companies are setting up shop in the places with the best infrastructure to ship their products, move their workers, communicate with the rest of the world. And that's why the over 1 million construction workers who lost their jobs when the housing market collapsed, they shouldn't be sitting at home with nothing to do. They should be rebuilding our roads and our bridges, laying down faster railroads and broadband, modernizing our schools – all the things other countries are already doing to attract good jobs and businesses to their shores.
Oh no you don't! Several stimuluses ago you promised us new infrastructure and you lied. Don't you dare steal another half (or whole) trillion from our children to fund another lie about updating infrastructure!
Today that choice is very clear. To reduce our deficit, I've already signed nearly $1tn of spending cuts into law and I've proposed trillions more, including reforms that would lower the cost of Medicare and Medicaid.
Could we see those please? I respectfully call BS.
Now, so far, most of my Republican friends in Washington have refused under any circumstance to ask the wealthiest Americans to go to the same tax rate they were paying when Bill Clinton was president. So let's just do a trip down memory lane here.
No need sir. You see, and I know I don't have to tell you, the economy wasn't waffling between stagnant and recession when Clinton did that. Besides, remember that guy who said, "You don't raise taxes during a recession"? Now I know, by technical measures, the recession is over. But the problem is there's no recovery. Normally when a recession ends there's a strong recovery and accompanying growth. But this time the business community is so afraid of you and your policies that nothing's happening. Couple that with seeing Europe flame out and your insistence that we follow them into the flames, and it's no wonder. Anyway, it's apples and oranges and you know it.
That is the height of unfairness. It is wrong. It's wrong that in the United States of America, a teacher or a nurse or a construction worker, maybe earns $50,000 a year, should pay a higher tax rate than somebody raking in $50m. It's wrong for Warren Buffett's secretary to pay a higher tax rate than Warren Buffett. And by the way, Warren Buffett agrees with me. So do most Americans – Democrats, independents and Republicans. And I know that many of our wealthiest citisens would agree to contribute a little more if it meant reducing the deficit and strengthening the economy that made their success possible.
Oy veh, let me know when you're going to start telling the truth, this was debunked months ago. Again, they don't, you know it, your own tax return proves it (below). We need a leader not a liar.
This isn't about class warfare. This is about the nation's welfare. It's about making choices that benefit not just the people who've done fantastically well over the last few decades, but that benefits the middle class, and those fighting to get into the middle class, and the economy as a whole.
Of course it is. You're the only one who still believes there's someone who doesn't know that.
Finally, a strong middle class can only exist in an economy where everyone plays by the same rules, from Wall Street to Main Street. As infuriating as it was for all of us, we rescued our major banks from collapse, not only because a full-blown financial meltdown would have sent us into a second Depression, but because we need a strong, healthy financial sector in this country.
Er, that first sentence may or may not be true. I'd love to see something that backs it up other than it's your opinion. In fact, I'd like to see something that backs up pretty much any of your opinions that are constantly presented as facts... As far as "rescuing the banks", don't even get me started. "Too big to fail" is nothing but a license to steal, and steal they have. Maybe if they were left to fail once in awhile, they'd behave more responsibly and try to avoid it. Crazy, huh?
Some of you may know, my grandmother worked as a banker for most of her life – worked her way up, started as a secretary, ended up being a vice president of a bank. And I know from her, and I know from all the people that I've come in contact with, that the vast majority of bankers and financial service professionals, they want to do right by their customers. They want to have rules in place that don't put them at a disadvantage for doing the right thing. And yet, Republicans in Congress are fighting as hard as they can to make sure that these rules aren't enforced.
Um, could we please go back to the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 for a moment? And while we're here, that statement about Republicans, could you flesh that out with a fact or two please? I mean, it's fun to blame someone else, but is it actually something that's happening anywhere but in your imagination?
We shouldn't be weakening oversight and accountability. We should be strengthening oversight and accountability.
Lack of oversight and accountability are not the problem; Sarbanes Oxley has more than taken care of this for businesses not run by current or former Goldman Sachs executives. Onerous, expensive regulations are. Counter-intuitive laws that force banks to make bad business decisions are. People like Barney Frank and Chris Dodd who set up a system to fail and then write regulations to punish it when it does, are.
Investing in things like education that give everybody a chance to succeed. A tax code that makes sure everybody pays their fair share. And laws that make sure everybody follows the rules. That's what will transform our economy. That's what will grow our middle class again. In the end, rebuilding this economy based on fair play, a fair shot, and a fair share will require all of us to see that we have a stake in each other's success. And it will require all of us to take some responsibility.
I could spend an entire blog on this one paragraph. First, education. We pay more per capita for education in the US than anywhere else in the world. What's it gotten us? Spoiled brat teachers unions screaming and protesting every time they're asked to quit treating the taxpayer like a trust fund. Leftist curricula designed not to teach our youth how to think but what to think and to think that common-sense conservatism is some kind of hell-spawned idiot evil while God-less, amoral leftism is enlightened and sophisticated. Revisionist history. Mush-brained youth who think it's noble to "protest" by camping out in public places and demand, well, something. (Still no one has been able to distill the message of the Occupy foolishness past "we hate people who have more than we do and we want their stuff". Apparently the irony of this is utterly lost on them, and that's another failure of education.) That's public education. And I'm supposed to be excited about the idea of pouring, no wait, "investing" more money in this?!? Why, I must be a complete idiot, because that sounds just plain stupid to me. I have a great idea. Delete the federal Department of Education, and return control to the taxpayers by giving every family a voucher for cost of the child's education to be used at the public or private school of their choice. Do you really want to see education improve in America Mr. President? Then put our money where your mouth is and open it up to the free market and watch what happens.
Then there's the tax code that makes sure everybody pays their fair share. I just love it when a progressive says the word "fair". You make this so easy. I mean, you made an adjusted income of $5.5m in 2009 and paid $1.7m in federal income tax. (Kudos on the charitable giving by the way... seriously.) That's very close to 33%. If you don't mind my saying so, that seems rather high. And in fact, it would indicate that millionaires such as yourself are already paying higher taxes than the rest of us. So this idea that millionaires don't pay their fair share has the lie put to it by your own tax return. Speaking of actually paying taxes, what about the 47% of US households that pay no income tax at all? Apparently many or all of them even get "refunds", which if we're going to be honest is simply redistribution of wealth; taking money from me and giving it to someone else. So, in light of all of this, again, please define "fair". We'll wait. The bottom line is that you can say the word "fair" a hundred times in a speech, but without a universal definition that all understand, it remains nothing but another pellet gun in your pathetic arsenal of class warfare weapons. But you'll never define it, because it can't be done; it's utterly subjective and if you have three people you'll have three opinions. It's a gimmick, and that's all it ever has been or ever will be.
It will require those of us in public service to make government more efficient and more effective, more consumer-friendly, more responsive to people's needs. That's why we're cutting programs that we don't need to pay for those we do. That's why we've made hundreds of regulatory reforms that will save businesses billions of dollars. That's why we're not just throwing money at education, we're challenging schools to come up with the most innovative reforms and the best results.
Dude. Seriously. Pull the other one. I know one of your advisors must have tried to tell you by now that we're not as think as you stupid we are. You really ought to listen. Absolutely no one believes a word of that last paragraph. No one.
That's how America was built. That's why we're the greatest nation on Earth. That's what our greatest companies understand. Our success has never just been about survival of the fittest. It's about building a nation where we're all better off. We pull together. We pitch in. We do our part. We believe that hard work will pay off, that responsibility will be rewarded, and that our children will inherit a nation where those values live on.
Uh, actually, you're thinking of communism, sir. Capitalism actually does have some aspect of "survival of the fittest" to it, but the great thing about it is that, more than any other system, capitalism affords opportunity to become that survivor. The thing you don't like about it is that it kind of tends to punish lackluster efforts and abject failure. No, little Barry, we don't all get a participation trophy for showing up. You wonder what's wrong with America? Let's start there... [tangent narrowly averted]
And it is that belief that rallied thousands of Americans to Osawatomie – maybe even some of your ancestors – on a rain-soaked day more than a century ago. By train, by wagon, on buggy, bicycle, on foot, they came to hear the vision of a man who loved this country and was determined to perfect it.
Mr. President, we don't want you to perfect America in your image. We want you to lead the government to get out of the way so that Americans can prosper by their own hard work and ingenuity. It's a real shame that you seem to find that impossible to consider. Yes, there are some who love the government gravy trains your ilk has built at our expense. But by and large, we really want that stuff cut down to the bare necessities and for you to leave us alone and let us get back to the business of being America.
We still believe that this should be a place where you can make it if you try. And we still believe, in the words of the man who called for a New Nationalism all those years ago, "The fundamental rule of our national life," he said, "the rule which underlies all others – is that, on the whole, and in the long run, we shall go up or down together." And I believe America is on the way up.
A "new nationalism"? From the guy who's spent three years trying to convince Americans that there's nothing unique and exceptional about America? You can't have it both ways, sir. But frankly, some of us have been waiting for you to start with the "nationalism" business for awhile now. Many of us have thought it was only a matter of time before that kind of thing started. You do realize that the only thing missing from your general game plan in the definition of "fascism" was nationalism, right? Probably not. For what it's worth, I don't think you're an intentional fascist. I don't think you're scheming fascism. I just think, in all seriousness, that being you might simply lead to it. At least, that's my observation thus far. The Constitution is an annoyance to be ignored, Congress working as it was designed to work is something for you to go around, government should control industry, criticism should be controlled, etc. In fact, if we substitute class warfare for racism, the definition of fascism could be a definition of your presidency. I hope you're as concerned about that as some of us are...
The sad thing about this very long post is that I left out so much. I skipped over easily half the speech, not because those sections were less worthy of scrutiny, but mostly out of a desire not to write something no one could possibly read without falling asleep or stroking out. I'm afraid I still did that. Hopefully my point is made by the time the reader collapses, and that point is just that this president can not be re-elected. He is so divisive, so damaging, so either confused about or simply against what America actually is, that he cannot be allowed four more years to "finish the job". I don't know about you, but those three words terrify me...
