Weekly Address: Time to Give the Middle Class a Chance

In this week's address, the Vice President discusses our continued economic recovery, with 10 million private-sector jobs created over the past 54 months. Yet even with this good news, too many Americans are still not seeing the effects of our recovery.

As the Vice President explains, there's more that can be done to continue to bolster our economy and ensure that middle-class families benefit from the growth they helped create, including closing tax loopholes, expanding education opportunities, and raising the minimum wage.

Click here to watch this week's Weekly Address.

10 Million Jobs

This week, American businesses officially marked the creation of 10 million new jobs in the last 54 months. 10 million.

And while there’s a lot more work to do, President Obama has made good on his promise of a "year of action." Here are some of the ways we’ve made our economy stronger than ever:

• Automobile production has skyrocketed and the automobile industry has hit its highest production rate since 2002.
• Our businesses are exporting more goods and services.
• New home construction has hit groundbreaking new levels since the recession.
• American consumers are spending billions more on goods and services.

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President Obama Addresses the People of Estonia

On Wednesday, the President became the first sitting U.S. president to address the people of Estonia. He reflected on the historic struggle the Baltic people have faced in their fight for democracy, and reiterated the United States' commitment to the people of Ukraine in their ongoing fight for independence:

We want Ukrainians to be independent and strong and able to make their own choices free from fear and intimidation, because the more countries are free and strong, and free from intimidation, the more secure our own liberties are.

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Celebrating Labor Day in Milwaukee

This past Monday, President Obama celebrated Labor Day with hardworking Americans at Milwaukee’s Laborfest, an annual festival hosted by the local AFL-CIO.

In his remarks, President Obama spoke about how we’ve made America stronger with record sales of American goods abroad, booming clean energy production, and much more. And while we’ve made substantial progress, the President reiterated that there’s still more work to do -- especially when it comes to raising the minimum wage for hardworking Americans:

I want an economy where your hard work pays off with higher wages, and higher incomes, and fairer pay for women, and workplace flexibility for parents, and affordable health insurance, and decent retirement benefits. I’m not asking for the moon, I just want a good deal for American workers.

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