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On Monday, we celebrate Labor Day. It's a chance to get together with family and friends,
to throw some food on the grill, and have a good time. But it's also a day to honor
the American worker - to reaffirm our commitment to the great American middle class that has,
for generations, made our economy the envy of the world.
That is especially important now. I don't have to tell you that this is a very tough
time for our country. Millions of our neighbors have been swept up in the worst recession
in our lifetimes. And long before this recession hit, the middle class had been taking some
hard shots. Long before this recession, the values of hard work and responsibility that
built this country had been given short shrift. For a decade, middle class families felt the
sting of stagnant incomes and declining economic security. Companies were rewarded with tax
breaks for creating jobs overseas. Wall Street firms turned huge profits by taking, in some
cases, reckless risks and cutting corners. All of this came at the expense of working
Americans, who were fighting harder and harder just to stay afloat - often borrowing against
inflated home values to pay their bills. Ultimately, the house of cards collapsed.
So this Labor Day, we should recommit ourselves to our time-honored values and to this fundamental
truth: to heal our economy, we need more than a healthy stock market; we need bustling main
streets and a growing, thriving middle class. That's why I will keep working day-by-day
to restore opportunity, economic security, and that basic American Dream for our families
and future generations. First, that means doing everything we can
to accelerate job creation. The steps we have taken to date have stopped the bleeding: investments
in roads and bridges and high-speed railroads that will lead to hundreds of thousands of
jobs in the private sector; emergency steps to prevent the layoffs of hundreds of thousands
of teachers and firefighters and police officers; and tax cuts and loans for small business
owners who create most of the jobs in America. We also ended a tax loophole that encouraged
companies to create jobs overseas. Instead, I'm fighting to pass a law to provide tax
breaks to the folks who create jobs right here in America.
But strengthening our economy means more than that. We're fighting to build an economy in
which middle class families can afford to send their kids to college, buy a home, save
for retirement, and achieve some measure of economic security when their working days
are done. And over the last two years, that has meant taking on some powerful interests
who had been dominating the agenda in Washington for far too long.
That's why we've put an end to the wasteful subsidies to big banks that provide student
loans. We're going to use that money to make college more affordable for students instead.
That's why we're making it easier for workers to save for retirement, with new ways of saving
their tax refunds and a simpler system for enrolling in retirement plans like 401(k)s.
And we're going to keep up the fight to protect Social Security for generations to come.
That's why we stopped insurance companies from refusing to cover people with pre-existing
conditions and dropping folks who become seriously ill.
And that's why we cut taxes for 95 percent of working families, and passed a law to help
make sure women earn equal pay for equal work in the United States of America.
This Labor Day, we are reminded that we didn't become the most prosperous country in the
world by rewarding greed and recklessness. We did it by rewarding hard work and responsibility.
We did it by recognizing that we rise or we fall together as one nation - one people
- all of us vested in one another. That is how we have succeeded in the past. And that
is how we will not only rebuild this economy, but rebuild it stronger than ever before.
Thank you. And I hope you have a great Labor Day weekend.