Obama: ‘I Don’t Need a Tax Cut; We’ve Already Been Blessed by This Country’

"It is a good thing that Republicans in Washington have started to talk about wages and incomes and the middle class. You know, it's better late than never. So I am encouraged. Unfortunately the policies they are putting forward don't answer the mail, they don't speak to the issues that ordinary families are facing. 

I will just give you a couple of examples. Their tax plan would give the average millionaire and billionaire a $50.000 tax cut. That's about what the average middle class worker makes in an entire year. They are also pushing a new $270 billion tax cut for the very wealthiest of the wealthiest. It would affect about 5,000 families all across America. It would cost $270 billion dollars.

Here in North Carolina it would benefit precisely a 120 households. For $270 billion dollars which is the cost approximately of tax breaks I am giving to 44 million people - would benefit little over 5,000 people. So their plan would cut taxes for the top one tenth of one percent and let taxes go up on 25 million working families and students. And my view is we don't need tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. 

I don't need a tax cut. We are already doing well. We've been blessed by this country and the opportunities that it offers and now what we have to focus on is to make sure everybody has opportunity. Making sure middle class families have tax cuts and a young family that just had their first child and they are still struggling to get by, that they get a little bit of relief, a little bit of a break. 

Those are the folks who need help. That's what middle-class economics is all about and that's what I'm going to be fighting for."