Obama: We’re Seeing the ‘Strongest Job Growth that We’ve Seen Since the 1990s’
"The strongest job growth that we’ve seen since the 1990s. And all of this is a testament to the hard work and resilience of the American people. They have been steady and strong digging themselves out of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. And what we need now to do is make sure we build on this momentum because we recognize that despite the solid growth, despite the drop in unemployment, there’s still a lot of folks out there who are anxious about their futures, who are having trouble making their needs at the end of the month saving for their kids’ college education or being able to make sure that they’re able to retire with dignity and respect.
So everything that we do over the next two years is designed and geared towards ensuring that folks who work hard in this country are able to get ahead. Now, obviously we’ve had a significant midterm election. As I said at the press conference, my attitude has been and will continue to be that good ideas don’t necessarily come from just one party and I’m looking forward to seeing the leaders of both Democratic and Republican caucuses this afternoon to have a chance to share with them both what I think we need to be doing to build on the economic momentum that we already have and make it even stronger, but I’m also going to be interested in listening to them in terms of areas where we think it’s possible to work together, whether that is putting people back to work through stronger manufacturing here in the United States and selling more to countries around the world.
One of the major topics that we’ll be discussing during my Asia trip next week is figuring out how we can build on some modest new investments that we’ve been making in early childhood education. We know that works and there’s strong bipartisan support around the country for some of those investments. Let’s see if we can do more. All of these issues are ones in which there is a strong possibility of bipartisan cooperation as long as we set politics aside for a moment and focus on the people who actually sent us here."
