Obama: Now It's Time to Work on Jobs

Barack Obama gave a Rose Garden address today after the Senate passed its bill boosting the debt ceiling, saying it was just “an important first step,” and that more compromises would have to come out of the committee created by the bill. Obama, who signed the bill into law less than an hour after the Senate acted, reiterated his calls for a “balanced approach” involving both “adjustments to health care programs like Medicare” and tax code reforms that ensure “the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations pay their fair share.”

But Obama’s focus was mostly on job creation and economic stimulus. He advocated extending tax cuts for middle-class families, reforming the patent system, passing trade deals, and creating a special bank to make infrastructure loans to private companies. “We have workers who need jobs, and a country that needs rebuilding,” he reasoned. “It shouldn’t take the risk of default, the risk of economic catastrophe, to get folks in this town to work together and do their jobs.” (More Barack Obama stories.)