Obama calls for economic boost for working families

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by: Joel Wendland
January 25 2010

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The Obama administration continued to address economic issues with the announcement of several new proposals, Jan. 25, designed to help ease financial anxieties for working families. In a meeting with the White House Middle Class Task Force, President Obama outlined five new proposals with a pledge to fight "every single day to put Americans back to work, create good jobs, and strengthen our economy for the long-term."

The proposals included an expansion of the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit to double its current value for most families earning $85,000 or less annually. This includes an expansion of subsidies to low-income families to cover child care expenses, to help an additional 235,000 children.

In addition, the administration proposed an expansion of its already ambitious student loan reforms. The new plan would limit student loan re-payments to 10 percent of a person's income with possible debt forgiveness after 20 years. Currently, the federal student loan program requires a minimum 15 percent monthly repayment.

The new middle-class proposals also include the creation of an automatic workplace individual retirement account (IRA), which would require all employers to provide the option for employees to enroll in a direct deposit IRA. The President also wants to expand tax credits and enact tougher regulations to protect retirement savings from speculators or the vagaries of the financial markets.

"For a year, our Task Force has been hearing that they are struggling with soaring costs and squeezed family budgets. These common sense initiatives will help these families cope with these challenges," said Vice President Biden, who chairs the Middle Class Task Force.

In a press briefing, Jan. 25, White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer said, these "initiatives go directly to dealing with the challenges facing middle-class families, challenges that many of them have been dealing with for decades and that have been exacerbated by the financial crisis."

Vice President Biden's top economic advisor, Jared Bernstein, told reporters that these proposals are a piece of the administration's fight for economic recovery and new jobs. He described job creation as the administration's "most urgent and pressing" task. Initiatives such as those outlined by the President on Monday are designed to ease the financial "squeeze" working families have been experiencing for years now, Bernstein explained.

More direct assistance for working families should not wait until the unemployment rate has fallen to "acceptable level" before action on them is taken, he said.

Photo: Vice President Joe Biden convenes the White House Middle Class Task Force. (White House Photo)

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  • The White House also called for a freeze in the budget for non-militairy spending to begin in 2011. This will cut deeply into the American Working Class and could produce a similar effect to Hoover's "do nothing" policy almost a century ago. This White House, this congress, and the "Democratic" Party is NO friend of Labor and NO friend of the American Working Class; They are quite pally with big business, though (check out Obama and top Dems' campaign finances and top contributions).
    It's always easy for the Dem Party to make a lot of big talk when they're in the minority or when the Republicans can filibuster (then they just blame the Repubs come election time) but when the voters come through for the Dems and they actually get their vaunted "super majority" we get worse than nothing in return, we get healthcare non-reform; a handout to the very corporate insurance companies that are making America sick and killing 60 people per day though denial of coverage or pricing coverage outside affordability.
    I see, and many working class people are starting to see the Dems' talk for what it is: talk. When they actually have the ability to get something done they just turn around and support the same capitalist profit interests their Republican opposition does. We aren't dealing with a "lesser evil" just two sides of the same coin, and until Labor and the Left break cleanly away from this rotten-to the core, corporate political party who slanders and defiles the word "Democracy", until we stop following the ill-"logic" of "lesser evilism" or the "politics of the possible" and instead learn to uncompromisingly fight our own fight and use the tools at our disposal to win; we won't see ANY of the fundamental transitional reforms Working Class people in the USA really want and need... not from the Democrats, at least.

    What America REALLY needs is a Class-based, politically independent Labour Party to fight uncompromisingly for the REAL interests of the Working Class.

    Posted by Paul Joseph Poposky, 01/26/2010 8:03am (2 months ago)

  • Better scratch your chin some more and write this over again if you think these things are going to help working class youth. Has the YCL taken this program of Obama's onto the college campuses? How do students respond?

    Posted by Don, 01/25/2010 5:36pm (2 months ago)

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