President Barack Obama used his weekly You Tube Radio Address to talk about cutting the deficit and creating jobs and repeated that tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires must be on the table:
President Obama used his weekly address to reiterate his demand for ending tax breaks for “millionaires and billionaires” in any budget deal to raise the nation’s debt limit.
“It would be nice if we could keep every tax break, but we can’t afford them,” Obama said. “Because if we choose to keep those tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, or for hedge fund managers and corporate jet owners, or for oil and gas companies pulling in huge profits without our help – then we’ll have to make even deeper cuts somewhere else.”
The president said that students, medical researchers and seniors would pay the price if those tax breaks were not taken away.
“That isn’t right, and it isn’t smart,” he said. “We’ve got to cut the deficit, but we can do that while making investments in education, research, and technology that actually create jobs.”
Obama did try to sound a positive note about the increasingly terse negotiations between Republicans and Democrats to raise the nation’s debt ceiling and reduce the defect.
“The good news is, Democrats and Republicans agree on the need to solve the problem,” the president said. “And over the last few weeks, the Vice President and I have gotten both parties to identify more than $1 trillion in spending cuts. That’s trillion with a ‘t.’”
Congress will not get any additional time to hammer out a deal to raise the debt limit from the Treasury Department, which announced Friday that Aug. 2 is still the latest it can continue borrowing funds without a boost.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.