Obama: Americans Don’t Think We’re Better off Because Min. Wage Not Raised

The president said the country is absolutely better off than it was when he took office

"Here's what I'm going to tell the American people. When I came into office, our economy was in crisis. We had unemployment up at 10 percent. It's now down to 6.1. We've had the longest run of uninterrupted private sector job growth in our history. We have seen deficits cut by more than half. Corporate balance sheets are probably the best they've been in the last several decades. We are producing more energy than we had before. We are producing more clean energy than we ever had before. I can put my record against any leader around the world in terms of digging ourselves out of a terrible, almost unprecedented financial crisis. Ronald Reagan used to ask the question, 'Are you better off than you were four years ago?' In this case, 'Are you better off than you were in six?' And the answer is, the country is definitely better off than we were when I came into office ... 

If we raise the minimum wage, if we make sure women are getting paid the same as men for doing the same work, if we are rebuilding our infrastructure, if we're doing more to invest in job training so people are able to get the jobs that are out there right now, because manufacturing is coming back to this country. Not just the auto industry that we've saved, but you're starting to see reinvestment here in the United States.”

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