In this week’s address, President Obama says that the economy is moving in the right direction, but there is still more work to do. He calls on Congress to act to give every responsible homeowner the chance to save money on their mortgage by refinancing at historically low interest rates, put more Americans to work rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, and fix our broken immigration system, so that we can continue to grow our economy and create good middle class jobs.
Author: Megan Slack
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Vice President Biden Visits Trinidad and Tobago
After stopping in Colombia on his three-country trip to reinforce partnerships in the Americas, Vice President Biden traveled to Trinidad and Tobago, where he met with President Carmona and Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar and participated in a meeting and working lunch with a number of other Caribbean leaders.
In that series of meetings, leaders discussed regional efforts to promote economic growth, citizen security and energy, among other issues.
“I'm here because President Obama wanted me to have an opportunity to dialogue with all of you and because our country is deeply invested and wants to become more deeply invested in a partnership with all the nations of the Caribbean,” the Vice President explained.
Our search for growth, jobs and affordable supplies of energy, our fight against transnational crime, and the protection of our climate and our environment — all of these issues, all of these issues have no respect for borders and they affect all of our borders. They directly affect the people of my country and each and every one of yours.
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President Obama: “The Jersey Shore is back in business”
Today, President Obama took a trip to the Jersey Shore, where he visited with local families and business owners who are preparing for the 2013 summer season.
President Obama last visited New Jersey in November of last year to see firsthand the damage and destruction caused by Hurricane Sandy. But today, thanks to extensive rebuilding efforts over the last several months, boardwalks, beaches and businesses up and down the shore are ready to welcome summer visitors, as the President explained.
Now, we all understand there’s still a lot of work to be done. There are homes to rebuild. There are businesses to reopen. There are landmarks and beaches and boardwalks that aren’t all the way back yet. But thanks to the hard work of an awful lot of people, we’ve got wonderful shops and restaurants and arcades that are opening their doors. And I saw what thousands of Americans saw over Memorial Day Weekend: You are stronger than the storm. After all you’ve dealt with, after all you’ve been through, the Jersey Shore is back and it is open for business, and they want all Americans to know that they’re ready to welcome you here.
“If anybody wondered whether the Shore could ever be all right again, you got your answer this weekend,” President Obama said. "From Sea Bright to Bay Head, from Belmar to Seaside Heights, folks were hanging out on balconies and beaches. Shows were sold out at the Stone Pony. Kids were eating ice cream and going on rides, going and eating some more ice cream. Guys were trying to win those big stuffed animals to impress a special girl."
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Catching Up with the Curator: The Steinway Piano
Ed. Note: "Carole King: The Library of Congress Gershwin Prize In Performance at the White House" will premiere tonight, Tuesday, May 28 at 8 p.m. ET on PBS stations nationwide (check local listings)
Tonight, PBS will broadcast "Carole King: The Library of Congress Gershwin Prize In Performance at the White House" a tribute to one of America's most successful songwriters and hosted by the President and the First Lady. To mark the occassion, we thought it was the perfect opportunity to talk with White House Curator, Bill Allman, about one of the White House's most recognized artifacts, The Steinway Piano.
Before the PBS show airs tonight, watch this video about the famous piano that has helped to establish the East Room of the White House as a focal point for the performing arts.
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A Data-Powered Revolution in Health Care
Thomas Friedman’s New York Times column, Obamacare’s Other Surprise, highlights a rising tide of innovation that has been unleashed by the Affordable Care Act and the Administration’s health IT and data initiatives. Supported by digital data, new data-driven tools, and payment policies that reward improving the quality and value of care, doctors, hospitals, patients, and entrepreneurs across the nation are demonstrating that smarter, better, more accessible, and more proactive care is the best way to improve quality and control health care costs.
We are witnessing the emergence of a data-powered revolution in health care. Catalyzed by the Recovery Act, adoption of electronic health records is increasing dramatically. More than half of all doctors and other eligible providers and nearly 80 percent of hospitals are using electronic health records to improve care, an increase of more than 200 percent since 2008. In addition, the Administration’s Health Data Initiative is making a growing supply of key government data on everything from hospital charges and quality to regional health care system performance statistics freely available in computer-readable, downloadable form, as fuel for innovation, entrepreneurship, and discovery.
As Friedman describes, these trends, combined with efforts under the Affordable Care Act to change how we pay health care providers to better reward improving the quality and value of care, are creating a “new marketplace and platform for innovation.” Entrepreneurs and innovators across the country are developing and deploying new data-powered IT tools to help clinicians succeed at delivering better care at lower cost.
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Good News on Innovation and Health Care
Ed. note: This is cross-posted from the HealthCare blog at HealthCare.gov. Read more about data-powered health care here.
A recent New York Times column, Obamacare’s Other Surprise, by Thomas L. Friedman echoes what we’ve been hearing from health care providers and innovators: Data that support medical decision-making and collaboration, dovetailing with new tools in the Affordable Care Act, are spurring the innovation necessary to deliver improved health care for more people at affordable prices.
Today, we are focused on driving a smarter health care system focused on the quality – not quantity – of care. The health care law includes many tools to increase transparency, avoid costly mistakes and hospital readmissions, keep patients healthy, and encourage new payment and care delivery models, like Accountable Care Organizations. Health information technology is a critical underpinning to this larger strategy.
Policies like these are already driving improvements. Prior to the law, nearly one in five Medicare patients discharged from a hospital was readmitted within 30 days, at a cost of over $26 billion every year. After implementing policies to incentivize better care coordination after a hospital discharge, the 30-day, all-cause readmission rate is estimated to have dropped during 2012 to a low of 18 percent in October, after averaging 19 percent for the previous five years. This downward trend translates to about 70,000 fewer admissions in 2012.
Insurance companies are also now required to publicly justify their actions if they want to raise rates by 10% or more. Since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, the proportion of requests for double-digit rate increases fell from 75 percent in 2010 to 14 percent so far in 2013.
Reforms like these have helped slow Medicare and Medicaid spending per beneficiary to historically low rates of growth.
Mobilizing Use of Health Information Technology
Last week, we reached an important milestone in the adoption of health information technology. More than half of all doctors and other eligible providers and nearly 80 percent of hospitals are using electronic health records (EHRs) to improve care, an increase of at least 200 percent since 2008.
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Vice President Biden Travels to Colombia
Marking his fourth visit to the region since taking office, Vice President Biden left D.C. on Sunday for a trip to Colombia, Trinidad and Tobago, and Brazil. Following President Obama’s recent visit to Mexico and Costa Rica, the trip is the latest demonstration of the United States’ commitment to reinforcing partnerships in the Americas.
The Vice President began his trip in Bogota, where he held a bilateral meeting with President Juan Miguel Santos of Colombia, and highlighted the country’s remarkable progress on security issues as well as the importance of our economic relationship.
Since our free trade agreement went into effect a little over one year ago, "United States exports to Columbia are up 20 percent,” the Vice President said.
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Connecticut Leads the Way on Protecting Children
At a town hall meeting today on school safety at the Classical Magnet School in Hartford, I got to hear firsthand how Connecticut is leading the nation in adopting common-sense solutions to reduce gun violence and improve school safety.
In the aftermath of the massacre at the Sandy Hook Elementary School last December, the courage and resilience of teachers, parents, children, and communities in the Newtown area has been nothing short of remarkable.
From Governor Dannel Malloy to state lawmakers to the members of the Sandy Hook Promise, the entire state worked together to pass comprehensive legislation to reduce gun violence.
Unlike here in Washington, Connecticut’s lawmakers didn’t defend the status quo or shrink from tackling difficult questions. With bipartisan support, they enacted a comprehensive law to help curb gun violence and mass shootings that does not infringe on the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens to defend themselves and hunt.
Connecticut’s leaders have set an example of political courage that can teach a lot to Congress and the rest of the nation. At today’s town hall meeting, Governor Malloy talked about how he decided to press ahead for new gun violence prevention measures, despite fierce attacks from the NRA.
By contrast, in Washington, Congress has so far failed to take the sensible step of expanding the background check system to close loopholes that allow criminals and the mentally ill to buy guns.
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President Obama Delivers the Commencement Address at the U.S. Naval Academy
Graduates toss hats in the air at conclusion of U.S. Naval Academy commencement at the Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium in Annapolis, Maryland, May 24, 2013.
(Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)
Today, President Obama delivered the commencement address to the U.S. Naval Academy class of 2013.
Today, each of you can take enormous pride, for you’ve met the mission of this Academy. You’ve proven yourselves morally, living a concept of honor and integrity — and this includes treating one another with respect and recognizing the strength of every member of your team. You’re the most diverse class to graduate in Naval Academy history. And among the many proud young women graduating today, 13 will serve on submarines.
You’ve proven yourselves mentally. Now, I know that some think of this as just a small engineering school on the Severn. You’ve not only met its rigorous standards, you’ve helped this Academy earn a new distinction — the number-one public liberal arts school in America.
President Barack Obama participates in the U.S. Naval Academy commencement at the Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium in Annapolis, Maryland, May 24, 2013.
(Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)
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President Obama Discusses U.S. Counterterrorism Strategy
President Barack Obama delivers a speech at the National Defense University at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C., May 23, 2013.
(Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
Today at National Defense University, President Obama laid out the framework for U.S. counterterrorism strategy as we wind down the war in Afghanistan.
President Obama discussed how the threat of terrorism has changed substantially since September 11, 2011, and explained his comprehensive strategy to meet these threats.
Read his full remarks here or read a fact sheet about the President's speech here.
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President Obama Meets with President Thein Sein of Myanmar
President Barack Obama holds a bilateral meeting with President Thein Sein of Myanmar in the Oval Office, May 20, 2013.
(Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson)
Today President Obama welcomed President Thein Sein of Myanmar to the White House for a bilateral meeting, the first visit to the United States by a leader of that country in almost 50 years.
“During this period in between there have been significant bilateral tensions between our countries,” President Obama said. “But what has allowed this shift in relations is the leadership that President Sein has shown in moving Myanmar down a path of both political and economic reform.”
But as President Sein is the first to admit, this is a long journey and there is still much work to be done. And during our discussions, President Sein shared with me the fact — the manner in which he intends to continue to move forward on releasing more political prisoners; making sure that the government of Myanmar institutionalizes some of the political reforms that have already taken place; how rule of law is codified so that it continues into the future; and the process whereby these ethnic conflicts that have existed are resolved not simply by a ceasefire but an actual incorporation of all these communities into the political process.
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President Obama Delivers the Commencement Address at Morehouse College
President Barack Obama delivers remarks during the commencement ceremony at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, May 19, 2013.
(Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
Today, President Obama delivered the commencement address to the 2013 graduates of Morehouse College in Atlanta, GA.
“It is one of the great honors of my life to be able to address this gathering here today,” President Obama told the graduates. He spoke about Morehouse’s history, and “ the unique sense of purpose that this place has always infused — the conviction that this is a training ground not only for individual success, but for leadership that can change the world.”
“Your generation is uniquely poised for success unlike any generation of African Americans that came before it,” President Obama said.
But that doesn’t mean we don’t have work — because if we’re honest with ourselves, we know that too few of our brothers have the opportunities that you’ve had here at Morehouse. In troubled neighborhoods all across this country — many of them heavily African American — too few of our citizens have role models to guide them. Communities just a couple miles from my house in Chicago, communities just a couple miles from here — they’re places where jobs are still too scarce and wages are still too low; where schools are underfunded and violence is pervasive; where too many of our men spend their youth not behind a desk in a classroom, but hanging out on the streets or brooding behind a jail cell.
My job, as President, is to advocate for policies that generate more opportunity for everybody — policies that strengthen the middle class and give more people the chance to climb their way into the middle class. Policies that create more good jobs and reduce poverty, and educate more children, and give more families the security of health care, and protect more of our children from the horrors of gun violence. That's my job. Those are matters of public policy, and it is important for all of us — black, white and brown — to advocate for an America where everybody has got a fair shot in life. Not just some. Not just a few.
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First Lady Delivers Commencement Addresses at Bowie State, Martin Luther King Jr. Magnet High School
First Lady Michelle Obama delivers remarks during the Bowie State University commencement at the Comcast Center in College Park, Md., May 17, 2013.
(Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson)
On Friday, First Lady Michelle Obama delivered the commencement address to the Bowie State University Class of 2013. Bowie State, which opened just two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, “this school was founded not just to educate African Americans, but to teach them how to educate others,” the First Lady explained.
And since then, generations of students from all backgrounds have come to this school to be challenged, inspired and empowered. And they have gone on to become leaders here in Maryland and across this country, running businesses, educating young people, leading the high-tech industries that will power our economy for decades to come.
That is the story of Bowie State University, the commitment to educating our next generation and building ladders of opportunity for anyone willing to work for it. All of you are now part of that story. And with that tremendous privilege comes an important set of responsibilities — responsibilities that you inherit the moment you leave this stadium with that diploma in your hand.
On Saturday, she traveled to Nashville to speak to the graduating class of Martin Luther King Jr. Magnet High School. The First Lady took the opportunity to talk to the students – all of whom are going on to higher education or the military – about some of the skills they’ll need as they make their way through college and through life: resilience, grit, and the ability to pick themselves up when they fall.
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Weekly Address: The President Talks About How to Build a Rising, Thriving Middle Class
President Obama talks about his belief that a rising, thriving middle class is the true engine of economic growth, and that to reignite that engine and continue to build on the progress we’ve made over the last four years, we need to invest in three areas: jobs, skills and opportunity.
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President Obama Is Headed to Baltimore – Learn Why
On Friday, President Obama is headed to Baltimore, Maryland to talk early childhood education, infrastructure and ensuring hard work leads to a decent living.
Watch the video below to learn more about what he’ll be doing in Baltimore, and check back on this post for updates from the trip – we’ll post them all here together.
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President Obama and Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkey Hold a Press Conference
President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey hold a press conference in the Rose Garden of the White House, May 16, 2013.
(Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)
Following their bilateral meeting this morning, President Obama and Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkey held a press conference in the Rose Garden this afternoon.
President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey hold a bilateral meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House, May 16, 2013.
(Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
The President highlighted three areas of focus the two leaders discussed: expanding trade and investment between the U.S. and Turkey, mutual security, and the issue of Syria.
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President Obama Honors Law Enforcement Officers Killed in the Line of Duty
President Barack Obama bows his head after placing a flower in a wreath during the National Peace Officers Memorial Service, an annual ceremony honoring law enforcement who were killed in the line of duty in the previous year, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. May 15, 2013. Chuck Canterbury, National President, Fraternal Order of Police and Linda Hennie, President, FOP Auxiliary stand with the President.
(Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
Today, President Obama spoke at the National Peace Officers Memorial Service, an annual ceremony honoring law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty in the previous year.
The President said that the 143 officers honored today “exemplified the very idea of citizenship — that with our God-given rights come responsibilities and obligations to ourselves and to others.”
They embodied that idea. That’s the way they died. That’s how we must remember them. And that’s how we must live.
We can never repay our debt to these officers and their families, but we must do what we can, with all that we have, to live our lives in a way that pays tribute to their memory.
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President Obama Explains How Health Reform Is Helping Women
With Mother’s Day just around the corner, President Obama today spoke to a group of women – including many moms – about the ways the Affordable Care Act is already helping millions of Americans like them.
"Women in particular now have more control over their own care than ever before," the President said. "And I’m pleased to be joined today by many women who wrote in to tell us what the Affordable Care Act means to them."
Carol was one of the women who wrote to the President, and today, she introduced him in the East Room. Carol's son, a 22-year-old college grad and traumatic brain injury survivor with a rare genetic lung disease, was able to stay on his family’s health insurance policy instead of being kicked off the plan this year. Finding coverage on his own would have been nearly impossible, as Carol wrote to the President: “Given his history, he would be virtually uninsurable under the old set of ‘rules.’ Instead of contemplating law school, all of his resources would have been channeled into somehow, somewhere, finding health insurance.”
Carol and her son are why the Affordable Care Act lets young people stay on their parent’s plan until they turn 26, President Obama said.
Alycia was also standing behind the President today.
"Alycia is the mother of Avey, who is a beautiful, sweet, 3-year-old girl who also happens to have Leukemia," he explained. "Imagine what that’s like for a parent. While you’re just figuring out how to take care of a baby, you’ve got to figure out how you’re going to pay for expensive treatment that could save your baby’s life.
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President Obama Talks Jobs, Skills and Opportunity in Austin
Today President Obama traveled to Austin, Texas, kicking off a series of Middle Class Jobs & Opportunity Tours focused on creating a strong and vibrant economy built on good middle class jobs.
The first stop on today’s tour was Manor New Tech High School, where students are learning the real-world skills they need to fill jobs that are available right now. Watch the President’s remarks at the school here.
President Barack Obama has lunch and talks with local residents at Stubb’s BBQ in Austin, Texas, May 9, 2013.
(Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
Next, President Obama sat down for lunch (Texas barbecue, of course) with local residents to discuss his vision for making sure that hard work leads to a decent living. He also met with technology entrepreneurs who showed him some of the tools and products they are developing that will drive America’s long-term economic growth.
President Barack Obama listens to a presentation about a new car that you can drive a wheelchair into, at Capital Factory in Austin, Texas, May 9, 2013.
(Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
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Manufacturing Innovation Institutes Explained in 60 Seconds
After shedding jobs for a decade, American manufacturers have added about 500,000 positions over the past three years. Production is growing at its fastest pace in over a decade. And as part of his plan to do everything he can to create jobs, strengthen the middle class, and fuel economic growth, President Obama is committed to continuing this progress, which is why he’s laid out a comprehensive agenda to make America a magnet for manufacturing.
Today, following through on a promise he made in his State of the Union, the President rolled out the first piece of that agenda, announcing competitions to establish three new Manufacturing Innovation Institutes. These new institutes, partnerships among business, universities and community colleges, and government, will develop and build manufacturing technologies and capabilities to help U.S.-based businesses and workers create good jobs.
We asked Gene Sperling, Director of the National Economic Council, to explain in 60 seconds or less why these institutes are an important part of the President’s strategy to invest in manufacturing. Hear what he had to say below.
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