Prersident Barack Obama on the Tom Joyner Morning Show on Friday, Sept. 10, 2010
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: How you been?
TOM JOYNER: I’VE BEEN GOOD. HOW HAVE YOU BEEN?
You know, I’m doing fine. Michelle’s doing well. The girls started school this week. So we are truly blessed.
HOW’S YOUR WEIGHT? YOU LOOK LIKE YOU’RE LOSING WEIGHT, MAN.
You know, I go up and down five pounds, but you know, I still fit the tux I was married in. Michelle doesn’t let me wear the tux anymore. She says it’s out of style.
OH, BY THE WAY, THANKS FOR PUTTING DONNA ON THE FITNESS COUNSEL.
Absolutely. In fact, are they doing something next week?
I THINK THEY ARE. ALL I KNOW IS YOU GOT HER OFF MY BACK, SO THANK YOU SO MUCH. (LAUGHTER) THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU.
Just doing my job.
AND HOW’S MS. ROBINSON?
She’s doing fine. You know, she took August off. She leaves the White House, goes back to Chicago, back to her house. Goes to the boats (Laughter) and does whatever it is that she does, and then she’s refreshed after being away from us for a month.
CAN SHE COME WITH US ON THE FANTASTIC VOYAGE CRUISE? SINCE SHE LIKES BOATS?
I’ll bet she might actually enjoy that. I’ll find out if she wants to do that. The only problem is she doesn’t like attention, and so if people knew it was her - and on that cruise, they would - I think she’d just feel like everyone was coming up to her.
NO, NO, NO … WE’RE ALL FAMILY ON THIS CRUISE.
Yeah, well, I’ll let her know that you invited her.
AND MAYBE MICHELLE AND THE KIDS CAN COME TO THE FAMILY REUNION AS WELL.
Well, I will let them know. I’ve been listening to you a long time, before I was president, Tom. I’ve been knowing you.
WELL, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR CALLING HOME. WE HAVEN’T HEARD FROM YOU IN A WHILE.
Well, it’s good to talk to you. You know, I don’t get a chance to do much radio these days. But one of the things I mentioned to my team was we’ve got to make sure that we’re not only talking to television, and especially in the African-American community, Tom Joyner and black radio is what people listen to.
WELL, THANK YOU VERY MUCH. THANK YOU. THANK YOU.
So I want to make sure that folks are getting it directly from me.
NOW, ACCORDING TO THE POLLS, THE GENERAL POLLS, YOU’RE NOT DOING SO WELL. BUT ACCORDING TO MY UNOFFICIAL AFRICAN-AMERICAN POLL, WE STILL LOVE YOU - WITH THE EXCEPTION OF TAVIS AND A FEW OTHER PEOPLE. BUT ANYWAY ... (LAUGHTER)
(TO CO-HOST SYBIL WILKES) WHAT SYBIL? I’M TALKING TO THE PRESIDENT HERE.
(SYBIL WILKES TO JOYNER) I KNOW, MAN TO MAN, I KNOW. SORRY.
BUT WE’RE COMING UP ON NOVEMBER, AND I’M NOT FEELING THAT THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN VOTER IS FIRED UP THIS YEAR.
Well, look, here’s the situation in the country as a whole. We want to reach out to everybody and get our message out, and the fact is that we went through, over the last two years, the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. It started well before I took office. It was peaking right around the time I was getting sworn in.
We were on the verge of going into a Great Depression. And so we had to take a bunch of emergency measures so that we didn’t go into a Great Depression. But we stabilized the financial situation, and stopped the bleeding, and so when we came in, we were losing 750K – 800K jobs a month. Now we’ve had eight consecutive months of private sector job growth. When I came in, the economy was shrinking, it was six percent, and now it’s growing. But it’s slow.
The economy right now is like a patient that got hit by a mat truck, and it has been convalescing; it keeps on getting better. And it can’t run yet, but it’s walking. It’s stabilized, it’s moving. But the truth of the matter is there’s still a lot of hurt out there. There’s still a lot of pain, and across the country, unemployment is way too high.
AND ESPECIALLY IN OUR COMMUNITY.
The unemployment rate is brutal. And so, even though I think people recognize that my administration has done what was necessary in order to prevent the worst outcome, understandably, people are still feeling like, boy, we got a long way to go. And I’m not satisfied with where we’re at right now.
So, the thing that I’ve been trying to emphasize over the course of this last week - and I’m going to keep delivering this message over the next 50-60 days - is that first of all, we have done a lot to improve people’s lives in concrete ways and kept promises that I made during the campaign.
And I can just take off with respect to the African-American community alone. We have passed a healthcare reform bill that is going to cover millions of people, disproportionally in the African-American community.
OKAY, HOLD UP. LET ME TAKE BREAK, AND THEN WE CAN DEAL WITH THE SPECIFICS OF HOW YOU’RE GOING TO TURN THIS THING AROUND.
THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES HAS CALLED HOME, AND HE’S GOT A DEAL ON HOW TO TURN THIS WHOLE ECONOMY AROUND IN THIS COUNTRY, ESPECIALLY FOR AFRICAN-AMERICANS 'CAUSE THAT’S WHO HE’S TALKING TO THIS MORNING - THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN COMMUNITY ON "THE TOM JOYNER MORNING SHOW." MR. PRESIDENT, WHAT’S THE NEW DEAL? HOW ARE YOU GOING TO TURN THIS THING AROUND?
Well, what we’ve been trying to do is build a new foundation for economic growth and prosperity in our communities. Look, the problems we’ve had are ones that have been going on for years. The recession made them much worse, but we didn’t see job growth between 2001 and 2008.
We did not see incomes rise or wages rise. The schools hadn’t gotten better. There were communities across the country that had been devastated for decades and were still devastated. And so what we’ve got to do is build a new foundation for growth.
Now, what we’ve done over the course of two years is laid that foundation. Put in place some key reforms. So before the break, I mentioned health care reform. That’s going to mean millions of African-Americans and Hispanics and people of every stripe across the country who did not have health care, even though they are working every day, who now are going to have health care.
Their preventive care is covered. Seniors who have big drug expenses, they’ve already gotten a rebate check of $250, and they are going to be able to get more. Young people, who are most likely to be uninsured, they are going to be able to stay on their parent’s insurance, so that is a pillar in this new foundation.
IMMEDIATELY OR ...
Immediately young people are going to be able to stay on their parent’s health insurance. Immediately if you’re working for small business, that small business is now getting a huge tax credit if they provide you insurance. Already, seniors have gotten help on their prescription drug coverage, so those are all things that are happening immediately.
And what we’re going to be doing is setting up a drug exchange where people can buy the same insurance that members of Congress get and with the same low rates and high quality, and they're also going to be able to get subsidies, but that won’t kick in until 2014. But that’s right around the corner. We’ve just got to set that up.
BUT PEOPLE DON’T HAVE JOBS. A LOT OF PEOPLE DON’T HAVE JOBS.
I understand, Tom, but a lot of folks who have jobs right now also don’t have health care. Number two, in terms of one of the keys that we’ve always talked about in terms of job growth - long term - is education.
We have done more to reform education in our communities in the last two years than had been done in the previous 20 years, and that’s at every level K-12. That’s making sure that we have better teachers, making sure that we have better equipment, making sure that the teachers aren’t laid off - which, by the way, are jobs that would have been lost had we not acted.
But it goes all the way up to higher education, where HBCUs are getting $850 million dollars over the next 10 years as a consequence of the steps we took.
THANK YOU.
Financial regulatory reform. We had a financial system where people are taken advantage of, and part of the problem with the economy crashing had to do with the housing market crashing.
And part of that was people were getting steered into mortgages that they couldn’t afford. Getting scammed in all kinds of ways. We now have a consumer protection financial agency that’s going to oversee everything, from credit cards to mortgages to payday loans, to make sure that people are going to be able to keep their money and not get taken advantage of and get overextended. So these are all examples of foundations for growth.
Now in terms of immediately what are we going to be doing in terms of boosting job growth? Jobs are being created out there, just not fast enough, so I made proposals this week. For example, let’s start rebuilding more of our roads and bridges and railways.
Put people back to work rebuilding America. And that is something that historically has gotten bi-partisan support. These Republicans have been saying no to this so far, but we think we can wear them down because we think it’s the right thing to do. We talked about providing tax breaks for small businesses because they’re the ones who are most likely to hire, and that’s true in the African-American community and every other community.
And so we already gave the tax breaks and incentives to hire people. Now we want to give them tax breaks so that they can further invest, and they can also start getting more credit, low rates for credit, so that they can start opening their businesses or expanding their businesses.
So there are a whole series of steps we are taking short term. The point that I’m trying to make here, Tom, is that we also have to have a plan here for the long term, and that’s what we’ve been putting into place over the last two years.
DOES ENDING THE WARS PLAY INTO GETTING THE ECONOMY BACK ON TRACK?
Well, here’s what I think is fair to say - and obviously, we are so grateful to the young men and women in uniform who fought in these wars, and when I delivered that Oval office speech announcing the end of combat wars in Iraq, that was one thing I said, that whether you were against the war or for the war, we all agree that they had done a heroic job.
RIGHT.
But there’s no doubt that as a consequence of the Iraq war, we spent a trillion dollars, and that did not build our country. In fact, we borrowed a trillion dollars from the Chinese and spent it in Iraq. And so having phased that down, we now are going to be in a better position to focus on rebuilding here at home.
But look, we’re still deep in debt as a consequence of a lot of those policies that were initiated under the previous administration and the previous Republican Congress. And you were talking about the election. Part of the thing I’ve got to remind people is that the policies that got us into this mess are the same policies that these Republicans are offering right now.
And so if African-Americans aren’t fired up right now, you better be fired up because you could end up in a situation where we could have more of the same from a Republican Congress that’s not willing to move our infrastructure, that’s not committed to investing in people and job training and not committed to investing in our education system. And we could end up slipping back into the same situation that we were in before this recession hit, only worse.
WE NEED TO BE FIRED UP.
And that’s what’s at stake in this election in November. We’ve got a very clear choice. What I’ve been saying on the road is this: These folks drove the car into the ditch, and I’ve been down in that ditch putting on my boots, getting dusty and pushing and shoving and breaking a sweat. And these guys have been sitting on the sidelines watching.
We finally got this car out of the ditch. We finally got it on level ground. We’re about to move forward, and now they want the keys back. And what I’ve been telling people is you can’t give them the keys back because they don’t know how to drive, and they will get us right back into the ditch. So, no, we’re not where we need to be. But at least we’re moving forward, and what we can’t start doing is moving backwards.
SYBIL WILKES: MR. PRESIDENT, THIS IS SYBIL WILKES. CAN YOU GIVE THE PEOPLE ANOTHER CONCRETE MOTIVATION FOR GETTING OUT THERE? BECAUSE THERE DOES SEEM TO BE A LACKSIDAISICAL, ALMOST LAID-BACK ATTITUDE REGARDING THE NOVEMBER ELECTIONS BECAUSE YOUR NAME ISN’T ON THE BALLOT. CAN YOU HAVE THEM UNDERSTAND WHAT THIS WOULD MEAN, THE KIND OF LOCKJAW OPERATION THAT WOULD BE IN WASHINGTON IF YOU DID NOT GET YOUR PARTNERS BACK IN CONGRESS?
I’ll give you a whole range of examples. We talked about health care. African-Americans don’t have health care, don’t have preventative care. Seniors are much more reliant on Medicare, but are still getting hammered with high prescription drug costs. Young people don’t have health insurance. The Republicans said explicitly that in spite of all the work we’ve done, that they’re going to try to repeal it.
Financial reform. We said that we are going to make sure we crack down on banks and credit card companies and payday loan companies, all of which takes money directly out of people’s pockets. And the rules that we’ve set up, they have said they think we should repeal a whole bunch of regulatory reform.
On tax cuts, right now we want to give tax cuts to middle class folks - your listeners - and give them a break. What the Republicans have said is we’re not going to give that up until we give tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires that would cost us $700 billion dollars over 10 years.
Now, what your listeners have to understand is that that $700 billon dollars is not money we got. So if the Republicans get their way, and they were able to take that $700 billon dollars and give to millionaires and billionaires - an average of $100 thousand dollars in tax breaks to somebody making more than a million dollars - that’s money that is coming directly out of the kinds of programs are so necessary to rebuild our community.
We’re not going to have money for HBCUs if that money has been gone to tax cuts. We’re not going to have money to building infrastructure to put people back to work in communities all around the country and in school construction. We’re not going to have money to be able to help states not lay off teachers if this money is going to those millionaires and billionaires. So there are a whole series of choices that are going to be forced upon us if people don’t take this election seriously.
IT’S JUST LIKE YOU SAID. GIVING THEM BACK THE KEYS TO THE CAR THAT THEY DROVE INTO THE DITCH.
Drove into the ditch. And you know the car is all banged up. It’s got a bunch of dents in the fender and all that, but at least it’s driving right now. And we still got to do some more work in the shop, but at least it’s moving forward. And these guys want to take it for a joy ride with all these special interest groups here in Washington driving shotgun with them.
WELL, I’M GLAD YOU CALLED HOME. CHECKED IN WITH THE FOLKS.
Well, it’s good to talk to you, Tom.
THANK YOU, MR. PRESIDENT.
It’s great to talk to you. And let me just say one last thing to all your listeners: You guys have been so supportive. We are going through something that this country hasn’t gone through since the 1930s, and no President since the 1930s has been dealing with two wars and this type of financial crisis at the same time.
And what it means is that sometimes it may seem like we are just focusing on today it’s Iraq, and tomorrow it’s Iran, and the next day, it’s the financial crisis - this, that and the other. But Michelle and I never forget the support and friendship we’ve received from the family on your show, and so just know that we greatly appreciate you guys and love you guys.
Posted By: Siebra Muhammad
Friday, September 10th 2010 at 4:20PM
You can also
click
here to view all posts by this author...
