WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama on Wednesday laid out an aspirational agenda for the remainder of his presidency, looking past the opposition that has blocked much of his administration’s efforts for three years and toward a wealth of policies to reduce joblessness, lift median wages and fix persistent problems in the economy that have caused intense anxiety for Americans.
Obama spoke later Wednesday at a White House “youth summit” on health care, where he encouraged young people to sign up for coverage the same day a new survey showed flagging support for his health-care overhaul among young adults.
Obama’s earlier remarks at an arts and education center in Washington - calling for a higher minimum wage, more early-childhood education and other measures - were his most specific road map for what he hopes to accomplish in the 37 months he has left in office.
“We know that people’s frustrations run deeper than these most recent political battles. Their frustration is rooted in their own daily battles, to make ends meet, to pay for college, buy a home, save for retirement,” Obama said. “It’s rooted in the nagging sense that no matter how hard they work, the deck is stacked against them. And it’s rooted in the fear that their kids won’t be better off than they were.”
At times dark, at times optimistic, Obama spoke of his and wife Michelle’s humble beginnings, recalled the economic activism of Presidents Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt and invoked the words of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Pope Francis.
In describing “the relentless decades-long trend” of a “dangerous and growing inequality and lack of upward mobility,” Obama acknowledged that his administration has so far failed to arrest the stubborn trends of widening inequality and declining economic opportunity.
Obama’s speech also was the first clear sign of the issues Democrats will likely campaign on as they seek to keep hold of the Senate and reclaim the House in next year’s midterm elections.
Democrats’ hopes of electoral success have been hindered by the severe problems buffeting the launch of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and healthcare.gov. But on Wednesday, Obama argued not only that the law is working better but also that it will help relieve some of the most significant financial pressures on middle-class Americans burdened by rising health-care and insurance costs.
“For decades there was one yawning gap in the safety net that did more than anything else to expose working families to the insecurities of today’s economy, namely, our broken health-care system,” Obama said. “That’s why we fought for the Affordable Care Act.”
Republicans have steadfastly rejected nearly all the president’s proposals, instead embracing deep spending cuts and the end to unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed.
“It should be no surprise why his approach has left more Americans struggling to get ahead,” Brendan Buck, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said in an email Wednesday. “The president’s economic policies promote government reliance rather than economic mobility. Rather than tackling income inequality by lifting people up, he’s been fixated on taxing some down.
Obama, however, said that if Republicans oppose his ideas, they still ought to offer proposals of their own.
“If Republicans have concrete plans that will actually reduce inequality, build the middle class, provide moral ladders of opportunity to the poor, let’s hear them,” the president said. “I want to know what they are.”
Obama’s address - hosted by the liberal Center for American Progress and delivered at Town Hall Education Arts Recreation Campus, which caters to people in one of Washington’s lowest-income areas - was the most recent form of an argument he has been honing since early in his political career.
Obama’s original concerns focused on the impact of globalization and technological automation on middle-class jobs, as well as growing wage inequality. And while those remain preoccupations, he has lately been sounding alarm on a newer phenomenon: declining economic mobility, where Americans born into lower-income families have less of a chance of making it to the middle class than in earlier eras.
Obama’s first batch of proposals early in his presidency focused on making immediate changes to the economy to boost jobs, but now he has shifted to trying to improve the nation’s long-term economic prospects.
“The idea that so many children are born into poverty in the wealthiest nation on Earth is heartbreaking enough,” Obama said. “But the idea that a child may never be able to escape that poverty because she lacks a decent education or health care or a community that views her future as their own - that should offend all of us. And it should compel us to action. We are a better country than this.”
Obama began his speech by weaving together economic-statistics discussion with more philosophical observations about the nature of opportunity in America. He then sought to shatter “myths,” starting with the notion that inequality is exclusively a problem of minority-group members.
“Some of the social patterns that contribute to declining mobility, that were once attributed to the urban poor … it turns out now we’re seeing that pop up everywhere,” he said. “So the fact is this: The opportunity gap in America is now as much about class as it is about race. And that gap is growing.”
Obama’s solutions were all ones that he has presented before, from passing an overhaul of immigration laws to enforcing equal-pay rules, to expanding education, to spending more on manufacturing and infrastructure.
“Government can’t stand on the sidelines in our efforts because government is us. It can and should reflect our deepest values and commitments,” he said. “And if we refocus our energies on building an economy that grows for everybody and gives every child in this country a fair chance at success, then I remain confident that the future still looks brighter than the past.”
YOUTH SUMMIT
At the meeting with youth activists, Obama urged them to not to give up on promoting his signature health-care law.
Obama told the group at the White House Youth Summit, which was designed to mobilize support for the health law, that he needed them “to spread the word about how the Affordable Care Act really works, what its benefits are, what its protections are and, most importantly, how people can sign up.”
“Look, you know, I do remember what it’s like being 27 or 28, and aside from the occasional basketball injury, you know, most of the time I kind of felt like I had nothing to worry about,” the president said. “Of course, that’s what most people think until they have something to worry about, but at that point, oftentimes it’s too late.”
Many young people remain reluctant to buy a health plan on the state and federal exchanges. A new poll by the Harvard Institute of Politics found that 29 percent of young, uninsured Americans say they are leaning toward enrolling, with 41 percent saying it’s a 50-50 proposition.
The survey of 2,089 Americans ages 18 to 29 was taken Oct. 30 through Nov. 11 and has a margin of error of 2.1 percentage points.
More than half of those 18 to 29 years old say they disapprove of Obamacare, and half expect it will increase their health-care costs.
An estimated 15.7 million Americans age 19 to 29 lack insurance, according to the Commonwealth Fund, a New York-based foundation that works to expand access to health care. The White House has said it needs 2.7 million young adults to buy insurance through the government-run marketplaces that opened Oct. 1.
Aaron Smith, the executive director of Young Invincibles, a group working to get young people insured, said the fact that the summit’s attendees included DJs and young entrepreneurs shows that the White House is looking for messengers “who are not in the political arena but have an entry point into young people and know how to communicate to young people.”
Smith said that while many young Americans remain undecided about whether they will sign up for insurance, some don’t know about the law’s central provisions,such as guaranteed coverage for people with pre-existing medical conditions.
Obama compared the push to expand health-care coverage to the civil-rights, women’s and labor movements, telling the group of young supporters gathered in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building’s South Court Auditorium, “I hope you haven’t been discouraged by how hard it’s been, because stuff that’s worth it is always hard. … You know, it’s never been easy for us to change how we do business in this country.”
The president also took aim at conservative groups campaigning against the health-care law, warning that if any of their members were to become sick or get in an accident, “the people who are running those ads, they’re not going to pay for your illness. You’re going to pay for it, or your family is going to pay for it.”
ARKANSAS NUMBERS
In Arkansas, many applicants have had difficulty enrolling through healthcare. gov, but others have had more success signing up for the state’s expanded Medicaid program by using state websites and other avenues.
As of Monday, at least 64,635 newly eligible adults had enrolled for Medicaid coverage that will start Jan. 1, Arkansas Human Services Department spokesman Amy Webb said.
The total included 59,203 people who will receive coverage through private insurance plans, with the premiums paid by Medicaid under the so-called private option approved by the state Legislature this year.
In addition, 5,432 applicants were assigned to the traditional Medicaid program because they were determined to have exceptional health-care needs.
Total enrollment in the expanded program represents an increase of about 860 from a week earlier, when at least 63,776 newly eligible adults had enrolled in either the private option or the traditional program.
The private option extended eligibility for the program to those with incomes of up to 138 percent of the poverty level - $15,860 for an individual or $32,500 for a family of four.
The Human Services Department has estimated that 250,000 Arkansans became eligible for coverage under the expansion.
“For us, the numbers continue to show that the private option was the right approach for us to take in Arkansas,” Webb said.
Information for this article was contributed by Zachary A. Goldfarb and Juliet Eilperin of The Washington Post, John McCormick of Bloomberg News, and by Andy Davis of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 12/05/2013