Washington: Observing that the American economy on its path to return as it added some 7.5 million new jobs in the past three and a half years, President Barack Obama yesterday said his administration has cleared away the rubble from the financial crisis and has begun to lay a foundation for economic growth and prosperity.
“Over the last three-and-a-half years, our businesses have added 7.5 million new jobs. The unemployment rate has come down. Our housing market is healing. Our financial system is safer. We sell more goods made in America to the rest of the world than ever before. We generate more renewable energy than ever before. We produce more natural gas than anybody,” Obama said in his remarks at the White House.
“Health care costs are growing at the slowest rate in 50 years. And just two weeks from now, millions of Americans who've been locked out of buying health insurance just because they had a pre-existing condition, just because they had been sick or they couldn't afford it, they're finally going to have a chance to buy quality affordable health care on the private marketplace,” he said.
“And what all this means is, we've cleared away the rubble from the financial crisis and we've begun to lay a new foundation for economic growth and prosperity,” Obama said in his remarks on the occasion of fifth year anniversary of the collapse of the Wall Street.
However, the job is not finished yet, he argued.
“All the remaining work that needs to be done to strengthen this economy. We need to grow faster. We need more good-paying jobs. We need more broad-based prosperity. We need more ladders of opportunity for people who are currently poor, but want to get into the middle class,” he said.
“Because even though our businesses are creating new jobs and have broken record profits, the top 1 percent of Americans took home 20 percent of the nation's income last year, while the average worker isn't seeing a raise at all,” said the US President.
Obama said most of the gains that has been made by the economic revival has benefited the top one percent of the society.
“Most of the gains have gone to the top one-tenth of 1 percent. So in many ways, the trends that have taken hold over the past few decades of a winner-take-all economy, where a few do better and better and better, while everybody else just treads water or loses ground, those trends have been made worse by the recession,” he said.
“That's where we should be focused on. That's what I'm focused on. That's what I know the Americans standing beside me, as well as all of you out there are focused on,” said the US President.
