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Obama To Business Leaders: We Have To “Take Responsibility” To Help Middle Class

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» 31 comments

President Obama spoke to the Chamber of Commerce earlier today, and encouraged the business community to work with him towards creating more opportunities for the middle class, while also arguing that some common sense regulations often do make sense in order to safeguard the economy. His speech today at the Chamber marked a fresh start for Obama, who in the past often viewed the Chamber as an opponent of many of his domestic policy goals.

Obama suggested:

“If we’re fighting to reform the tax code and increase exports to help you compete, the benefits can’t just translate into greater profits and bonuses for those at the top. They have to be shared by American workers, who need to know that expanding trade and opening markets will lift their standards of living as well as your bottom line.”

Many critics of the Obama administration might hear a phrase like profits must be “shared” and instantly think “aha, Obama is a socialist.” However, Obama elaborated on his proposal saying that improving the standard of living for the middle class is “not something necessarily we can legislate, but it’s something that all of us have to take responsibility for thinking about, how do we make sure that everybody’s got a stake?” In other words, the seemingly new centrist Obama is not demanding anything specific from the business community, but instead merely encouraging them to realize the benefits in helping to raise the “tide” so that “all boats” can be lifted in the future.

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  • http://www.zazzle.com/talkingpoints NORBIT Jr.

    Urgent:

    Obama Admin. in collusion with Trial Lawyers to target small business owners for legal extortion!

    WH set up an 800# at labor for employees “unhappy” with their employer to have trial lawyers SUE the small business owners, on contingency fees!

    Trial Lawyers OWN the Democratic Party!

    CRONY CAPITALISM AT WORK!!!

    Call your GOP rep & DEMAND they Investigate this Quid-Pro-Quo from the corrupt Administration.

  • WCinWI

    Haha I watched part of this….until he repeated his campaign slogan of Winning the Future.

    He sounded sooooooo much like a Republican, it was scary.

  • ModerateMan

    I don’t think Obama understands capitalism. Nobody gets to choose who makes what. You have to earn it.

  • The Lantern of Truth

    And King Barry knows business . He ‘s organized protests of plenty of them .

  • ImJustThatDamnGood

    They can start by not shipping the middle class’ jobs overseas.

  • http://www.heartland.org/environmentandclimate-news.org/ClimateConference4 Just Tex

    O-Bummer “encouraged the business community to work with him towards creating more opportunities for the middle class”.

    What’s O-Bummer done to create “more opportunities for the middle class”?

    The USA is being beaten (like a dead horse) all around the world, because of our high taxes, our over regulation and because of our highly unstable business climate. Which have all been enhanced and compounded, by O-Bummer’s own govt policies!

  • TeaPartyPatriot

    “You Lie!” hussein’s message to the Chamber is clear: “Help fund my re-election or I’ll vilify and demonize you even more than I already have.”

    That’s what is called EXTORTION, and it is an IMPEACHABLE OFFENSE.

  • Liberal Tormentor (formerly Seeing 2012 From My Window)

    Why do liberals keep trying to convince us that Obama doesn’t believe in redistributing wealth, when his OWN words say otherwise? If you are so convinced that your way is right, why do you feel the need to lie about your intentions?

  • Liberal Tormentor (formerly Seeing 2012 From My Window)

    ImJustThatDamnGood says:
    They can start by not shipping the middle class’ jobs overseas.

    Perhaps they wouldn’t if the gov’t didn’t tax the heck out of them and make it easier and more profitable to do so.

  • http://www.zazzle.com/talkingpoints NORBIT Jr.

    Just watch Obama lie and lie and lie; then threaten and threaten and threaten….this is the quality of person you get when you vote Democratic.

    The GOP House should be INVESTIGATING every aspect of this REGIME!

    E-mail your GOP rep. & your entire friends list.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Dronetek-Bulk-Vanderhuge/100000918732763 Dronetek

    Liberal Tormentor (formerly Seeing 2012 From My Window) said:
    Why do liberals keep trying to convince us that Obama doesn’t believe in redistributing wealth, when his OWN words say otherwise? If you are so convinced that your way is right, why do you feel the need to lie about your intentions?

    Because Democrats/liberals dominate the media and they know they are in control of Obama’s image. Remember when Bush’s words were repeated over and over for years on end? Now notice how none of Obama’s words ever seem worthy of any coverage at all? Its all about controlling the image and narrative.

  • TangledThorns

    Everybody should lay off Obama, he’s still in training.

  • http://www.heartland.org/environmentandclimate-news.org/ClimateConference4 Just Tex

    Someone needs to tell Mr. O-Bummer precisely how the business sector works, since it’s painfully clear that he and his minions (AKA Henchmen), who have NEVER worked in the private sector, simply don’t have a clue.

    On the outside chance that someone @ the admin, or @ the DNC (Democrat National Committee. NOT the dnc ~dilation and extraction~ late term abortion procedure) may be reading this thread, I’ll do my best to briefly explain business. On the outside chance they have the cognitive ability to comprehend something so foreign to them.

    First, business needs a stable political climate, so that investors will have confidence that too much or all of their investment won’t be taken away by over reaching government.

    But under O-Bummer and the Democrats, we do not currently have anything even close to being “a stable political climate”.

    Second, business needs stable and reliable sources for the various supplies it consumes, as it goes about it’s everyday course of conducting business. Which of course includes (among other things) “stable and reliable sources” of energy.

    But under O-Bummer and the Democrats, we do not currently have anything even close to being “stable and reliable sources” of energy. In fact, in just the last few days huge swaths of Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah and Arizona have all had “rolling blackouts” of electricity, and extended periods of outages of natural gas because the windmill electricity generating systems in Texas (the largest of any US state) didn’t produce enough electricity to pump natural gas through the vast network of pipelines. Causing thousands of businesses and ten of thousands of homes to be without both electricity, and without natural gas as well!

    That’s the end of lesson # 1. Since I don’t want to overwhelm and thereby fully confuse, the far less than powerful ~liberal~ mind. Perhaps more to come later. That is, if any of you Lefty’s can show that you’ve been able to grasp the meager amount of information that I’ve written about so far.

  • david r

    The Lantern of Truth said:
    And King Barry knows business . He ’s organized protests of plenty of them .

    King Barry is right. The whole thing sounds like noblesse oblige. He’s always been a closet monarchist, with him as King, of course.

  • dummy123

    Electric Cars and High Speed Trains???
    Worst President EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  • http://www.heartland.org/environmentandclimate-news.org/ClimateConference4 Just Tex

    NORBIT Jr. said:
    The GOP House should be INVESTIGATING every aspect of this REGIME!

    Indeed. In fact, the ONLY budgets Speaker Boehner should be increasing (rather than cutting), are the standing Committees in charge of investigating O-bummer’s malfeasance, acts of contempt, and various outright acts of lawlessness.

  • Leftist Asshat

    WTF? Why is President Obama using teabagger Gingrich’s “Winning The Future” slogan? It’s not even as good as “Yes We Can” and “Hope”!

  • http://www.heartland.org/environmentandclimate-news.org/ClimateConference4 Just Tex

    WCinWI said:
    He sounded sooooooo much like a Republican, it was scary.

    I’ve always known that several species of lizards, including the common chameleon, could change and manipulate all it’s colors at will. But who knew there’s a type of snake that could do the same thing too?

    Wait. Isn’t that what Clinton, and most of the other Lefty’s have ALWAYS done? Yup. My bad, for failing to make the connection.

    Democrat = chameleon = snake = Communist

  • Bobomatic

    This from a man who has never run a business or met a payroll or been accountable to shareholders. The only thing he’s run is his mouth about things he knows nothing about. How ’bout getting government the hell out of the way.

  • http://www.heartland.org/environmentandclimate-news.org/ClimateConference4 Just Tex

    Leftist Asshat said:
    Why is President Obama using teabagger Gingrich’s “Winning The Future” slogan?

    Gingrich a “teabagger”? Naw. He leaves that type of thing to the Left. And, if what you mean is he’s somehow affiliated with the Tea-Party Movement, you’re wrong about that too! We won’t have anyone that is still embracing the Blo-Bull-Warming meme.

    That’s because we’ve all read the Climate-Gate emails, which exposed the whole mess as lies and nothing but lies.

  • http://www.zazzle.com/talkingpoints NORBIT Jr.

    dummy123 said:
    Electric Cars and High Speed Trains???Worst President EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Let’s see something accomplished on these talking points first, before outawing oil & gas!

    We hear a lot about green jobs too, and in 50 years they may be viable, but let’s not be held hostage to environmentalist tyranny and junk science while they’re being created.

  • ProgLib

    Corporate tax rates should get lowered across the board, but only if they can close the loop holes that only huge companies can afford to sneak through. The rest of us are paying to support huge multinational corps and their cadre of lawyers. I wouldn’t be opposed to special incentives for companies that create jobs here either, as opposed to shipping them overseas.

  • SWWT

    Liberal Tormentor (formerly Seeing 2012 From My Window) said:
    Perhaps they wouldn’t if the gov’t didn’t tax the heck out of them and make it easier and more profitable to do so.

    Well that’s debatable. I’d say cheaper labor overseas has more to do with outsourcing than taxes.

  • timzank

    ImJustThatDamnGood said:
    They can start by not shipping the middle class’ jobs overseas.

    Like GE & Immelt, Barry’s new boy?

  • Hawk11

    Liberal Tormentor (formerly Seeing 2012 From My Window) said:
    Perhaps they wouldn’t if the gov’t didn’t tax the heck out of them and make it easier and more profitable to do so.

    You know what… You’re just a fucking idiot. Seriously. And I say it with both a smile on my face and at the same time feeling sorry for the fact that people who think like you reside in this country. Redistributing wealth? Do you even know what that means?
    So you think it’s ok for a 65 year old billionaire to get a 1.1 billion dollar golden parachute, when he’s already worth billions. That 1.1 billion could employ 2,000 people at $50K per year for 10 years.

    Here’s what republicans want….
    No regulation
    No minimum wage
    Lower to no corporate taxes
    Lower tax rate on the rich, higher on the middle class and poor.
    blah blah blah… and then you know what the US becomes? China!!!

    Now you’ll laugh your way through this. someone with such intransigence toward those who believe that man should help his fellow man, not to mention the constant headache you must have from banging the back of your head against the back of the desk while giving Glenn Beck a blow job.

    You’re not a liberal tormentor. Liberals feel sorry for such idiocy. You remind me of the constant video clip I see of Michelle Bachmann where she’s standing on a podium making a speech, behind her there is a 30 something year old woman standing there looking so proud to be behind her. Little do people know that she is a Russian mail order bride who is pissed because her wealthy pimp husband has to pay a higher tax rate. Yes, let’s promote that.

    It’s comical, and i feel sorry for those who refuse to support anything this administration tries to do for the majority of this country.

  • ChrisNH

    What a brilliant man Obama is! That Ivy League stuff really DOES pay off. Tomorrow, Obama should come out and coin the phrase, ‘profit sharing’ since something like this has NEVER, EVER been thought of before. What an Einstein Obama is. I feel like bowing before him just like he enjoys doing to every international dictator he comes across.

  • Sidhekitten

    ProgLib said:
    Corporate tax rates should get lowered across the board, but only if they can close the loop holes that only huge companies can afford to sneak through.

    Sigh, basic economics lesson time. Business looks at taxes as a cost, an expense that must be addressed. Corporations do not pay taxes if they can all help it, their customer’s do. The larger the corporation, the less likely company will absorb that cost. If they no longer can pass that cost on and can afford to move out of country, they do. (Just like Government Motors continues to do to get out of the union infested rust belt states). So the question becomes, how do you want to “pay” for the tax, in higher prices or loss of jobs, your choice.

    As an aside, I would like to thank California for making it possible for Nissan to move it’s US Headquarters here to Nashville a few years ago. Now that the nuts and flakes are ready to invoke Cap and Tax on the state, maybe we will get some more of their operations as well as other companies that are pulling the ripcord and bailing out. What is Tennessee’s secret, NO STATE INCOME TAX! (Sorry about the caps, but as a translated Yankee, I know sometimes it’s the only way to get attention up there.)

  • X-3

    What mean “we” Qimo Sabe? I take responsibility to help myself. Business owners are not charities and neither are they the government who deems it within their powers to confiscate the wealth of those who earn it and redistribute it to those who do NOT earn it.

    If government wants to “help,” the best help it could provide is to tear down the anti-business regulations and tax structure so manufacturing businesses (which typically offers the highest paid job to workers) would return from foreign shores. The next thing government could do is to stop subsidizing union workers and make the “entidamit” welfare weenies get off their asses and go to work.

  • X-3

    ImJustThatDamnGood said:
    They can start by not shipping the middle class’ jobs overseas.

    How does the light of truth feel? I believe that’s the first reasonably astute thing I’ve seen from you.

  • X-3

    dummy123 said:
    Electric Cars and High Speed Trains???Worst President EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    He would have been close to the target had he advocated a transcontinental network of high-speed FREIGHT trains. Think of it! Such a network would save BILLIONS of gallons of diesel fuel each year and decongest our roadways by the removal of long-haul 18-wheelers.

    (You and I can make this happen IF we let our elected servants know that we demand it.)

  • Morgan

    Matt Schneider wrote:> President Obama spoke to the Chamber of Commerce earlier today, and encouraged the business community to work with him towards creating more opportunities for the middle class…

    In other words, Obama asked the business community to “throw itself on the hand gernade” for the good of the economy.

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