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Obama Meets with Buffet, Rubin, Sweeney in Focus on the Economy |
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In addressing the challenges facing working families in the nation’s ongoing economic crisis, Sen. Barack Obama met yesterday with a bipartisan group of economic thinkers from the worlds of labor, business, government and academia to discuss what’s wrong with the economy and what steps need to be taken to fix it. AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney was among the attendees at the meeting, who include billionaire investor Warren Buffet and former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin.
Acknowledging the dire state of the economy, Obama sharply critiqued the Bush administration agenda that has left us where we are today. Specifically, he tied the failures in the economy to the fact that wages have been stagnant even as productivity has risen.
The challenges we’re facing could not be more critical, and if we want to meet them, then we can’t afford to keep idly doing the same things we’ve been doing over the last several years.
It was not an accident of history of a normal part of the business cycle that led us to this situation. There were some irresponsible decisions that were made on Wall Street and in Washington. In the past few years I think we’ve re-learned an essential truth: That we can’t have a thriving Wall Street when we don’t have a thriving Main Street. When wages are flat and prices are rising, and more and more Americans are mired in debt, then the economy as a whole suffers.
Obama’s prescription for the economy includes short-term and long-term steps to create shared prosperity for all families. For the short-term, he supports a new round of economic stimulus as a necessary counterbalance to declining jobs and wages and rising consumer prices. Long-term steps, Obama says, must include investing in the energy economy, to lower fuel costs and create jobs, and ensure everyone has affordable, high-quality health care to keep the country healthy and businesses competitive.
Yesterday’s meeting launches a series of economic town halls, where Obama will meet with workers and families to listen to their concerns about the economy. Tomorrow, he’ll travel to Springfield, Mo., for a town hall meeting, followed by a town hall in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the next day.
Obama’s campaign has released a 12-page Blueprint for Working Women and Families (in PDF) detailing Obama’s plans to provide relief for working families facing a tough economy. The policy prescriptions include a middle-class tax cut, expanding paid sick leave, fighting for fair pay for women and expanding affordable, quality health care coverage.
In addition to President Sweeney, attendees at the meeting included Jared Bernstein, the senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute; former U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.); Berkshire Hathaway chairman and CEO Warren Buffet, who attended by phone; Anna Burger, secretary-treasuer of SEIU and chair of the Change to Win federation; Gov. Jon Corzine (D-N.J.); former U.S. Secretary of Commerce William Daley; JPMorgan Chase CEO James Dimon; William Donaldson, former chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission; Pepsico CEO Indra Nooyi; former U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill; Federico Pena, former U.S. energy and transportation secretary and former Denver mayor; Classic Residence by Hyatt CEO Penny Pritzker; former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich; former U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin; Google CEO Eric Schmidt; William Spriggs, Howard University economics professor and department chair; former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers; Laura Tyson, University of California business professor; and former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker.
To learn more about Obama, check out Meet Barack Obama and get details on his positions on working family economics here.
4 Comments
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After reading Obama’s prescription for the economy and the PDF on working women and families I am in shock and awe. Barack is going to cure cancer if elected? The way it’s written he is going to cure all the other problems in this country single handed. I think you need the cooperation of congress to get this stuff done. I need to go back to jibjab.com and watch their campaigning video a few more times for a reality check.
The key to changing anything substantive in this country is reaching a filibuster proof 60-vote majority in the Senate and holding those spineless Democrats accountable to the people that put them there. Otherwise, we’ll get more of what we’ve gotten for the last two years - a record number of well-intentioned bills blocked by obstructionist Replicans.
the list of economic advisors reads like a who’s who of bankrupt capitalist thugs. They have no interest in ‘change’ except the kind they rip off from taxpayers to subsidize their corporate fat cat lifestyle. Billionaire Buffet should have been arrested for ripping off millions of people and causing starvation worldwide. How does it feel to shake hands with a billionaire crook? And of Penny Pritzker has blood on her hands for ruining the lives of thousands of people thru foreclosure as a result of her role in the ARM mess.
Thankfully, we can choose a real people’s advocate this year with Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney on the ballot (unless our friends in SEIU try more dirty tricks as they did in 2004 to thwart Nader’s right to ballot access). What a bunch of B.S.
I agree with all of you,how many CEO’s are interested in working people,and you can not change anything by yourself and there is no one in Congress Democrat or Republican that gives a damn either.Vote these deadheads out. There can be no change if we keep sending the same people back to Congress,join the Independent Party and vote against them no matter what the persons name on the ballot is ,if you never heard of them,probably no one owns them yet.Obama and McCain helped put us where are today.Remember they are both U S Senators and that means that some LOBBYIST owns them.Wait and see one of them is our next President and we have helped them get there.Incumbents hit the road we have had enough.