WHITE HOUSE VIDEO MESSAGE: Reflecting on the Year of Action

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

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EMBARGOED UNTIL 6:00 AM ET, SATURDAY, May 3, 2014

WHITE HOUSE VIDEO MESSAGE: Reflecting on the Year of Action

WASHINGTON, DC – In this week’s message, Associate Director of the Office of Public Engagement Jorge Neri discussed the year of action in which the President will do whatever he can to help create more jobs and opportunity for hardworking families.

Remarks of Jorge Neri

Spanish Weekly Address

The White House

Hi, everybody.  The President’s number one priority is doing whatever he can to create more jobs and opportunity for hardworking families.  Yesterday, we learned that businesses added 273,000 jobs last month, and the unemployment rate fell to its lowest level in more than five years.

But we need to keep going – to create more good jobs, and give middle-class families a sense of security.  And at a time when Latino unemployment continues to fall – we need to do everything we can to ensure that hardworking Americans have access to go jobs so we can continue on the progress we’ve made.

But so far this year, Republicans in Congress have blocked or voted down every serious idea to create jobs and strengthen the middle class.  They’ve said “no” to raising the minimum wage, “no” to equal pay for equal work, and “no” to restoring the unemployment insurance they let expire for more than two million Americans looking for a new job. 

That’s not what we need right now, with too many folks out of work and too many families working harder than ever just to get by. 

That’s why, in the President’s State of the Union Address, he said that in this Year of Action, whenever he can act on my own to create jobs and expand opportunity for more Americans, he will.  And since January, he’s taken more than 20 executive actions to do just that.

The President acted to raise more workers’ wages by requiring that workers on new federal contracts earn a fair wage of at least $10.10 an hour – and he’ll keep working with cities, states, and businesses to give more Americans a raise.  And the President is modernizing regulations to make sure that more Americans who work overtime get the pay they’ve earned – to name a few of the executive actions the President has taken.

Each of these steps will make a difference.  You can check out the full list at whitehouse.gov.

But we could do a lot more if Republicans in Congress were less interested in stacking the deck in favor of those at the top, and more interested in growing the economy for everybody. 

That’s why the President is going to take action to grow our economy from the middle-out, not the top down.  To give every American who works hard a chance to get ahead. 

Thanks, happy Cinco de Mayo and have a great weekend.

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The audio of the address and video of the message is available online HERE.