Posted on 09/11/2011 9:57:14 AM PDT by tsowellfan
Washington (CNSNews.com) – While demanding bipartisan support for a $447-billion jobs bill, President Barack Obama questioned whether Republicans want a “race to the bottom” and would allow children to be exposed to mercury.
“The people of this country work hard to meet their responsibilities. The question tonight is whether we’ll meet ours. The question is whether, in the face of an ongoing national crisis, we can stop the political circus and actually do something to help the economy,” Obama said in his speech to a joint session of Congress.
“The question is -- the question is whether we can restore some of the fairness and security that has defined this nation since our beginning.”
Sagging in the polls, Obama spoke to an even more unpopular Congress about his plans for reviving the economy. His so-called American Jobs Act – a second stimulus of sorts -- comes more than two years after Democrats passed the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
The current Obama plan includes extending the payroll tax cut agreed to last year, providing tax incentives for hiring, and providing funding for construction and infrastructure improvements.
Obama also had a response to Republicans’ calls to reduce job-killing regulations.
“What we can’t do -- what I will not do -- is let this economic crisis be used as an excuse to wipe out the basic protections that Americans have counted on for decades,” Obama said. “I reject the idea that we need to ask people to choose between their jobs and their safety. I reject the argument that says for the economy to grow, we have to roll back protections that ban hidden fees by credit card companies, or rules that keep our kids from being exposed to mercury, or laws that prevent the health insurance industry from shortchanging patients. I reject the idea that we have to strip away collective bargaining rights to compete in a global economy.”
“We shouldn’t be in a race to the bottom, where we try to offer the cheapest labor and the worst pollution standards. America should be in a race to the top and I believe we can win that race,” the president said.
Obama said the plan would be paid for, but specifics on that would be forthcoming. He said he would ask the recently appointed congressional “super-committee” to find ways of offsetting the bill’s price tag.
He called the plan “balanced,” saying it would “reduce the deficit by making additional spending cuts, by making modest adjustments to health care programs like Medicare and Medicaid, and by reforming our tax code in a way that asks the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations to pay their fair share.”
The president said he thinks Americans are with him on the issue of raising taxes on the rich.
“While most people in this country struggle to make ends meet, a few of the most affluent citizens and most profitable corporations enjoy tax breaks and loopholes that nobody else gets,” Obama said. “Right now, Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary -- an outrage he has asked us to fix. We need a tax code where everyone gets a fair shake and where everybody pays their fair share, and by the way, I believe the vast majority of wealthy Americans and CEOs are willing to do just that if it helps the economy grow and gets our fiscal house in order.”
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said the best thing the government can do is remove barriers to private sector job growth.
"The proposals the President outlined tonight merit consideration," Boehner said in a statement Thursday night. "We hope he gives serious consideration to our ideas as well. It’s my hope that we can work together to end the uncertainty facing families and small businesses, and create a better environment for long-term economic growth and private-sector job creation.”
These new light bulbs they are shoving down our throats will really expose kids to mercury when one gets broken. Idiots.
Scraping the bottom is how we ended up with this @sshat.
Wait a minute - you are driving we are in the back of the bus!
Sure we can Bozo! All we have to do is get your butt out of the White House for a good start!
Obama! you jackass! we are already at the bottom!
I am so sick of this bunch. Meanwhile exposing the children to their commie way of thinking is the worst thing for them.
Too bad Boehner would not say that. Shame shame shame on them. While Obama attacks the republicans and tries to pin this Obama Depression on them, some republicans are running around the country blaming republicans too.
“Yep....that’s pretty much it.....high unemployment and a crappy economy.....America becoming the laughingstock of the world....yep, that’s me.....so let’s steal some more money to pay off my voters.....that’s the trick!!!!”
So is capitalism, unfortunately. They do not know the difference between Obamanomics and Capitalism.
This **** is amazing.
Obama owned the Congress, Senate and executive office for 2 years, now suddenly it is the republicans fault that nothing has been done to fix the economy.
We needed Obamacare, we needed a new war in Libya, We needed cash for clunkers, we needed the Chevy volt..blah blah blah...
Even if Republicans wanted to race to the bottom, Obama’s already there.
A race to the bottom with the democrats would be foolish, they’re already at the finish line.
That really means a lot from a man who sat in Jeremiah Wright’s church for 20 years, let the man minister to his family, and called him a mentor.
Oh, let’s not forget his friendship with American terrorist, Bill Ayers.
....Yeah, that means a lot from someone like that.
Mercury? What about the Mercury laden flu vaccines this administration has pushed on the public?
This coming from the very same Welfare President? How ironic.... =.=
This is a false and misleading statement.
Our children will be exposed to mercury regardless of what we do now or in the future. Mercury exist in nature and has been released in to nature by generations past and will be by our and future generations.
Should mercury be controlled? Yes.
The real question rational people ask is how much mercury should be controlled? (This is the rational question all thinking people ask)
What is the safe level reasonably and economically achievable? Is it 1 part per million or 1 part per billion?
People have been exposed to trace amounts of these naturally occurring chemical and elements for as long as there have been people and our biological systems have found ways to eliminate most of them or found other ways to deal with them below a certain level. This level can be determined for most toxins for the majority of the population. The problem is that the Ecological Radical lobby does not believe there is any safe level for hazardous materials. This is of course a logical fallacy.
The lower you try to take your emissions of hazardous materials from industrial processes the more expensive the processes become until it becomes price prohibitive to produce a product. When you reach that point you have two choices; stop production or move production out of the country.
Guess which happens more often.
What is kind of funny is, in markets you do have to find the bottom to grow.
Finding the bottom lets you price in the extreme worse case and enables you to make solid business plans for growth.
Funny he chooses this terminology all the time.
Like business, but backwards. Finding the bottom is what happens right before you start to grow again.
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