{"id":14109,"date":"2016-01-09T10:12:09","date_gmt":"2016-01-09T18:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/69.46.6.243\/?p=14109"},"modified":"2016-01-09T10:13:55","modified_gmt":"2016-01-09T18:13:55","slug":"president-obamas-weekly-address-america-can-do-anything","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/?p=14109","title":{"rendered":"President Obama&#8217;s Weekly Address: America Can Do Anything"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Washington, DC&#8230;Hi everybody.  Seven years ago, the American auto industry was on the brink of collapse.  Plants were closing.  Hundreds of thousands of workers were getting laid off from jobs that had been their ticket to a middle-class life.  And as the pain spread across the country, another one million Americans would have lost their jobs in the middle of the worst economic crisis of our lifetimes.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/WQM6VG5F3Ek\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Some said it was too late to turn things around.  But I refused to turn my back on so many of the workers that I\u2019d met.  Instead, I placed my bet on American workers.  I placed my bet on American manufacturing.  In exchange for help, we demanded responsibility.  We said the auto industry would have to truly change, not just pretend that it did.  We got labor and management to settle their differences.  We got the industry to retool and restructure.  Everyone had some skin in the game.<\/p>\n<p>Our plan wasn\u2019t popular.  Critics said it was a \u201croad to socialism,\u201d or a \u201cdisaster\u201d waiting to happen.  But I\u2019d make that bet again any day of the week.  Because today, the American auto industry is back.  Since our plan went into effect, our automakers have added more than 640,000 new jobs.  We\u2019ve cut the Detroit-area unemployment rate by more than half.  The Big Three automakers are raising wages.  Seven years ago, auto sales hit a 27-year low.  Last year, they hit an all-time high.   <\/p>\n<p>Later this month, I\u2019ll visit the Detroit Auto Show to see this progress firsthand.  Because I believe that every American should be proud of what our most iconic industry has done. <\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not unlike what America overall has done these past seven years.  Our businesses are now on a 70-month streak of job creation, with more than 14 million new jobs in all.  We\u2019ve revamped our schools and the way we pay for college.  We\u2019ve made historic investments in clean energy and put ourselves on a path to a low-carbon future.  We\u2019ve brought more than 17 million Americans into our health care system, seen health care prices grow at the lowest rate in fifty years, and covered more than 90 percent of our people for the very first time.  We\u2019ve even cut our deficits by nearly 75 percent in the process.<\/p>\n<p>The point is America can do anything.  Even in times of great challenge and change, our future is entirely up to us.  That\u2019s been on my mind while I\u2019m writing my final State of the Union Address.  And on Tuesday, I\u2019m going to talk about the choices we have to make to set this country firmly on an even better, brighter course for decades to come. <\/p>\n<p>Thanks, and have a great weekend.<\/p>\n<p>###<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Washington, DC&#8230;Hi everybody. Seven years ago, the American auto industry was on the brink of collapse. Plants were closing. Hundreds of thousands of workers were getting laid off from jobs that had been their ticket to a middle-class life. And as the pain spread across the country, another one million Americans would have lost their [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14111,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_cbd_carousel_blocks":"[]","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,5,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-government","category-news","last_archivepost"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Fullscreen-capture-192016-101244-AM.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}