Watch What Happened When Obama Praised Minimum Wage Raise in Red State Speech On Tuesday, Pres. Obama took his push to raise the minimum wage to Amazon’s headquarters at Chattanooga, Tennessee. However, instead of receiving what you would expect from this red state crowd that is portrayed by the mainstream media as being steadfastly against Pres. Obama’s economic message, the speech was very well received by nearly everybody in attendance. We went through the video and brought you the best part, a one minute segment where he lays a beautiful argument for raising the federal minimum-wage, and the crowd went wild! Please watch the video(below the full transcript) and let us know your thoughts in the comments section, and share this video. Here is the full transcript of President Obama’s speech to Tennessee’s Amazon Corp. workers: Hello, Chattanooga! It’s great to be back in Tennessee, and it’s great to be here at Amazon. Thank you, Lydia, for that introduction and for sharing your story. I just finished getting a tour of a very small part of this massive facility. It’s the size of 28 football fields. Last year, during the busiest day of the Christmas rush, customers around the world ordered more than 300 items from Amazon every second – many of them traveling through this building. So it’s kind of like the North Pole of the South. Before we start, I want to recognize your general manager, Mike Thomas; my tour guide and your Vice President, Dave Clark; the mayor of Chattanooga, Andy Berke; and Congressman Jim Cooper. Thank you all for being here. I’ve come here today to talk a little more about something I laid out last week, and that’s what we need to do as a country to secure a better bargain for the middle class – a national strategy to make sure everyone who works hard has a chance to succeed in the 21st century economy. Over the past four and a half years, we’ve been fighting our way back from a devastating recession that cost millions of Americans their jobs, their homes, and their savings – a recession that laid bare the long erosion of middle-class security. Together, we took on a broken health care system. We invested in new American technologies to reverse our addiction to foreign oil. We changed a tax code that had become tilted in favor of the wealthiest at the expense of working families. We saved the auto industry, and thanks to GM and the UAW working together to bring jobs back to America, 1,800 autoworkers in Spring Hill are on the job today in what was a once-closed plant. Today, our businesses have created 7.2 million new jobs over the last 40 months. This year, we’re off to our best private-sector job growth since 1999. We now sell more products made in America to the rest of the world than ever before. We produce more renewable energy than ever, and more natural gas than anyone. Health care costs are growing at the slowest rate in 50 years. And our deficits are falling at the fastest rate in 60 years. Thanks to the grit and resilience of the American people, we’ve cleared away the rubble from the financial crisis, and begun to lay a new foundation for stronger, more durable economic growth – the foundation required to make this century another American century. But as any middle-class family will tell you, we’re not where we need to be yet. Even before the crisis hit, we were living through a decade where a few at the top were doing better and better, while most families were working harder and harder just to get by. Reversing this trend must be Washington’s highest priority. It’s certainly mine. But for most of this year, an endless parade of distractions, political posturing and phony scandals have shifted focus from what we need to do to shore up the middle class. And as Washington heads towards another budget debate, the stakes could not be higher. That’s why I’m visiting cities and towns like this – to lay out my ideas for how we can build on the cornerstones of what it means to be middle class in America. A good job with good wages. A good education. A home to call your own. Affordable health care that’s there for you when you get sick. A secure retirement even if you’re not rich. And more chances for folks to earn their way into the middle class as long as they’re willing to work for it. I’ve come to Chattanooga today to talk about that first and most important cornerstone of a middle-class life: a good job in a durable, growing industry. But the truth is, each of these cornerstones is about jobs. Preparing our children and our workers for the global competition they’ll face – that’s about jobs. A housing finance system that makes it easier and safer to buy and build new homes – that’s about jobs. Health care that frees you from the fear of starting your own business – that’s about jobs. And retirement benefits speak to the quality of our jobs. And jobs are about something more than a statistic or a headline. In America, we’ve never just defined having a job as having a paycheck. A job is a source of pride and dignity; the way you support your family; the proof that you’re doing the right thing and meeting your responsibilities and contributing to the fabric of your community. So we should be doing everything we can as a country to create more good jobs that pay decent wages. Period. And the problem is not a lack of ideas. Plenty of independent economists, business owners, and people from both parties agree on what we have to do to create good jobs. You’ve heard them debated again and again these past few years. I proposed many of these ideas two years ago in the American Jobs Act. Some were passed by Congress. But most of them weren’t, even if they’re ideas that have historically had Republican support. Here is the video of the minimum wage raise commentary and red state crowd reaction: youtu.be/MVuN3VEn8oc
Posted on: Thu, 01 Aug 2013 01:45:51 +0000
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