President Obama continues his call for a return to American values, including fairness and equality, as part of his blueprint for an economy built to last. 

Transcript | Download mp4 | Download mp3

Learn more

• Details for President Obama's plan to help homeowners.

A quick look at this week on WhiteHouse.gov:

Talking Tuition with the Wolverines: Shortly after delivering his State of the Union address, the President took his Blueprint for making college more affordable straight to the people at the frontlines of the issue—students. Speaking from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, the President noted that a college degree “will be the best tool you have to achieve that basic American promise.”

A Georgian Visitor: Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili met with the President in the Oval Office on Monday, discussing relations between our two countries—including Georgia’s contributions to the military operation in Afghanistan and the potential for a free trade agreement between the United States and Geogia—and marked the 20th anniversary of diplomatic relations between both countries.

Hanging Out on Google+: The President participated in the first-ever virtual interview from the White House on Monday from the Roosevelt Room. After more than 227,000 people submitted questions or voted for their favorites, the President sat down for a discussion with a group of Americans from across the country in a Google+ Hangout. In case you missed it, you can watch the full video here.

The Cabinet Convenes: On Tuesday, the President held a Cabinet meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House to discuss the ideas he laid out in the State of the Union. A top priority mentioned by the President during the State of the Union was the need to promote small business throughout the country, which was echoed in the meeting, where a new Cabinet member and the head of the Small Business Administration, Karen Mills, joined the discussion and ensured that entrepreneurs were represented.

In the Showroom: With Detroit’s newest vehicles on display at the Washington Auto Show, the President took a trip across town to get a glimpse of the outstanding work produced within the U.S. auto industry. He was impressed by what he saw, saying, “Because of folks coming together, we are now back in a place where we can compete with any car company in the world.”

Fairness, Responsibility and Housing: One way the President plans to achieve his Blueprint for an America Built to Last is by taking action to help responsible borrowers and support a housing market recovery. On Wednesday, he expanded on the ideas he presented in the State of the Union—including a proposal for a Homeowners Bill of Rights—at the James Lee Community Center in Falls Church, Virginia, where home values have fallen by about a quarter from their peak.

The National Prayer Breakfast: At the annual National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., the President spoke about how his faith and values guide the difficult decisions he makes as he leads the country.

This week, we celebrated the 1-year anniversary of Startup America, a White House initiative to encourage and accelerate high-growth entrepreneurship.

Forgot to send a card in honor of the occasion? Don’t worry, we won’t tell. But you should take a few minutes to watch this White House White Board, released this day last year, and learn about how Startup America can help entrepreneurs overcome the “valley of death” they often face when launching a new project.

Find out more about how Startup America can help to boost startups and small businesses that create so many jobs in this country:

• Read the details of the Startup America legislative agenda President Obama sent to Congress
• Watch the Gene Sperling, Steve Case, and Aneesh Chopra answer questions about Startup America in a White House Hangout
• Video: What Can Startup America Do for Me?
• Video: Advice for Young Entrepreneurs from Startup America

President Barack Obama delivers remarks on the Veterans Job Corp and the economy while speaking at Fire Station #5 in Arlington, Va., Feb. 3, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Even with the news that the economy added 257,000 private sector jobs in January, there is more work to do to help our veterans returning from war find new jobs at home. And this morning, President Obama visited a fire station in Arlington, Virginia to discuss a new set of ideas to do just that -- including a Veterans Job Corps.

In the State of the Union, President Obama said:

[Our] freedom endures because of the men and women in uniform who defend it. As they come home, we must serve them as well as they’ve served us. That includes giving them the care and the benefits they have earned –- which is why we’ve increased annual VA spending every year I’ve been President. And it means enlisting our veterans in the work of rebuilding our nation.

That's a sentiment the President echoed today at Fire Station #5:

Our veterans are some of the most highly trained, highly educated, highly skilled workers that we’ve got.  These are Americans that every business should be competing to attract. These are the Americans we want to keep serving here at home as we rebuild this country. So we’re going to do everything we can to make sure that when our troops come home, they come home to new jobs and new opportunities and new ways to serve their country.

Already, the Obama Administration has helped 600,000 veterans and their family members go back to school on the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill and hired more than 120,000 veterans to serve in the federal government. First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden have worked with the private sector to secure a pledge from businesses to hire 135,000. And President Obama worked with Congress last fall to pass two new tax credits for companies that put veterans to work.

Now President Obama is making a new push to help veterans build the lives the deserve. In Arlington, he called for three new initiatives.

First, President Obama is working to help state and local communities hire veterans to work as first responders. The administration will make available $166 million in 2012 Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) Hiring Grant funding and $320 million in 2012 Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) grants and award that money with a preference to communities that recruit and hire post-9/11 veterans. The President's budget for the 2013 fiscal year will include additional $5 billion for these grant programs.

Second, the President is working to develop a Veterans Job Corps conservation program that will put up to 20,000 veterans to work over the next five years. They'll work to restore habitats, eradicate invasive species, maintain public lands, and operate public facilities.

Third, President Obama wants to expand entrepreneurship training opportunities for service members and veterans. Back in August, the Administration established a two-day course in entrepreneurship as part of the Transition Assistance Program with the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs, along with the Small Business Administration. The SBA also offers an eight week online training program that will teach the fundamentals of small business ownership to more than 10,000 veterans every year.

Learn More

• Visit Joining Forces to learn more about ways to help military families.
• Check out the online tools available to help veterans search for jobs.

President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama invited a group of American heroes to the White House for a very special movie night. The guests were retired Tuskegee Airmen, the African American veterans who overcame segregation and prejudice to become one of the most highly respected fighter groups of World War II, and whose achievements paved the way for full integration of the U.S. military.

The movie was "Red Tails", a new film that tells the Tuskegee story. "Red Tails"was produced by George Lucas, directed by Anthony Hemingway and stars Cuba Gooding Jr., who all joined the President, the First Lady and the Airmen for the screening in the White House theater.

Today’s employment report provides further evidence that the economy is continuing to heal from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. It is critical that we continue the economic policies that are helping us to dig our way out of the deep hole that was caused by the recession that began at the end of 2007. Most importantly, we need to extend the payroll tax cut and continue to provide emergency unemployment benefits through the end of this year, and take the additional steps that President Obama proposed in his State of the Union address to create an economy built to last.

The unemployment rate fell 0.2 percentage point to 8.3%, from a high of 10% in October 2009. The drop in unemployment over the month was entirely due to employment growth, as the labor force participation rate remained constant, once new population weights are taken into account.  The unemployment rate has fallen by 0.8 percentage point in the last 12 months. Private sector payrolls increased by 257,000 jobs and overall payroll employment rose by 243,000 jobs in January. Despite adverse shocks that have created headwinds for economic growth, the economy has added private sector jobs for 23 straight months, for a total of 3.7 million payroll jobs over that period. In the last 12 months, 2.2 million private sector jobs were added on net.  Nonetheless, we need faster growth to put more Americans back to work.

Sectors with net job increases in December included professional and business services (+70,000), manufacturing (+50,000), leisure and hospitality (+44,000), health care and social assistance (+29,700), and construction (+21,000).  Government lost 14,000 jobs.

The monthly employment and unemployment numbers can be volatile, and employment estimates can be subject to substantial revision. Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report; nevertheless, the trend in job market indicators over recent months is an encouraging sign.

This week, the President made history by holding the first completely virtual interview at the White House on Google+. He also tackled the rising cost of tuition at the University of Michigan, welcomed the President of Georgia, convened a cabinet meeting, stopped by the Washington Auto Show, announced a major refinancing plan for responsible homeowners, and attended the National Prayer Breakfast.

Felicia Escobar, Senior Policy Advisor in the White House Domestic Policy Council, and Luis Miranda, Director of Hispanic Media in the Communications Office, participate in a conference call with people who signed a petition on We the People.

Yesterday, we joined a conference call with individuals from across the country to discuss issues impacting foreign students studying in our colleges and universities. We were joined by our colleagues Julie Rodriguez from the Office of Public Engagement and Luis Miranda from the Office of Communications. The conference call was the next step in our response to a petition submitted through We the People on Whitehouse.gov. We the People is a new way to petition the Obama Administration to take action on a range of important issues facing our country.  We created We the People last year to help make your voices heard in our government. We know that some of the best ideas come from individuals directly impacted by federal policies.

On our call, we discussed the impact that existing immigration laws have on foreign students who have earned advanced degrees in American schools.  As President Obama said during his State of the Union address, it makes no sense to allow these talented students to come to the U.S. and “to study business and science and engineering, but as soon as they get their degree, we send them home to invent new products and create new jobs somewhere else.”  That’s why the President supports legislative measures that would attract and retain immigrants who create jobs and boost competitiveness here in the U.S. – including "stapling" green cards to the diplomas of certain foreign-born graduates in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields – as a part of his vision for building a 21st century immigration system.

We reiterated this message on our call, and also discussed what the Administration is doing—independent of Congress—to help improve existing immigration policies to attract and keep the best and the brightest in our country. During the Q&A session, callers raised many concerns regarding F-1 and other visas targeted for highly skilled immigrants.  Among these was a question regarding the possibility of extending employment authorization to certain spouses of H-1B visa holders who are awaiting the adjudication of green card applications.  We were especially pleased to inform the callers that the Department of Homeland Security had announced just the day before—as part of the One Year Anniversary of the White House Startup Initiative — that they will be addressing this very issue through regulatory reforms. 

Every day, the Administration is working to make improvements in the areas where we can really make a difference.  It is invaluable to hear from people directly affected by our current immigration policies in order to get closer to the President’s vision of a 21st century immigration system that grows our economy and meets our security needs.

Felicia Escobar is a Senior Policy Advisor in the White House Domestic Policy Council and Doug Rand is a Senior Policy Advisor in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy

Click here to see the video.

This morning at the National Prayer Breakfast, President Obama gave a speech where he described how his faith as a Christian informs his thinking as a leader.

And he talked about the importance of our shared set of values as Americans:

We can’t leave our values at the door. If we leave our values at the door, we abandon much of the moral glue that has held our nation together for centuries, and allowed us to become somewhat more perfect a union. Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Jane Addams, Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day, Abraham Heschel -- the majority of great reformers in American history did their work not just because it was sound policy, or they had done good analysis, or understood how to exercise good politics, but because their faith and their values dictated it, and called for bold action -- sometimes in the face of indifference, sometimes in the face of resistance.

This is no different today for millions of Americans, and it’s certainly not for me.

The whole speech is worth a watch. Check it out above.

read more

Last week in his State of the Union Address, the President laid out his blueprint for an economy built to last, where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules. He believes this is a make or break moment for the middle class and those trying to reach it. He knows what’s at stake: the very survival of the basic American promise that if you work hard, you can do well enough to raise a family, own a home, and put enough away for retirement.  

The fact is, economic security for the middle class has been eroding for decades. Millionaires and billionaires saw their wealth skyrocket while too many Americans were struggling to get by. And in 2008, the house of cards collapsed. Mortgages were sold to folks who couldn’t afford or understand them.  In addition to the nearly eight million jobs lost, it left responsible homeowners holding the bag and badly hurt from this irresponsible behavior.  

The President refuses to stand on the sidelines and let folks fend for themselves. That’s why he laid out a plan to help responsible borrowers and relieve some of the pain caused by the financial crisis. The President knows the government can’t fix the housing market on its own, and he believes that responsible homeowners should not have to sit and wait for the market to hit bottom to get relief when there are measures at hand that can make a meaningful difference. This includes allowing these homeowners the ability to save an average of $3,000 dollars a year by refinancing at today’s low interest rates. He also put forward a single set of standards, or a Homeowner Bill of Rights, to make sure borrowers and lenders play by the same rules. 

Additionally, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, with Treasury and Housing and Urban Development, announced a pilot sale of foreclosed properties to be transitioned into rental housing.  This will help stabilize neighborhoods and improve home prices. These are just a few of the steps that’ll strengthen the housing market and help folks who are underwater on their mortgage.  

read more