CBS Gives Obama Over 26 Minutes to Lecture on the Economy
CBS gave President Obama over 26 and a half minutes to answer 12 questions related to the economy during a town hall aired on Thursday's Early Show. Obama got six uninterrupted minutes to answer one question about Medicare during the hour-long event. Host Erica Hill wondered how the Democrat could ” change the mind-set from things are tough to things are turning around ” with the economy. Hill led the town hall with her concerned economic “mind-set” question, noting beforehand that “it seems that we have been hearing, whether it's on TV, at the office, around the kitchen table, things are tough,” but continuing that “there's positive economic data coming through. Yet, sometimes it can feel like for every two steps forward, it's one step back. There's definitely a psychological component to this recovery .” Once the President gave his initial answer, co-host Harry Smith followed up by pointing out how apparently, “people aren't feeling it, though…..So, you can read in the Wall Street Journal and the stock market has recovered really well, but at the same time, there are a lot of people who've stopped looking for jobs. Jobs just aren't there.” Later in the hour, CBS correspondent Rebecca Jarvis relayed a viewer's question from Internet to Mr. Obama: “So many of the good paying jobs have been outsourced, leaving nothing but low wage jobs. How can employers feel good enough to hire again or increase wages with so much uncertainty about the economy?” After he answered, Jarvis then asked a related question of her own from the left: JARVIS: At the same time, though, that we've seen some job growth, there are still 13.7 million people in this country unemployed. Wages have stagnated for the last decade, and you mentioned stocks are up ten percent away from their all time highs. Companies are making record profits. They have $2 trillion of cash to spend. If this isn't the right circumstance for raising wages and really going out and employing new people, what will be? Smith did interject with a right-leaning point after the Democrat answered an audience's question about her small business: “But as a small business person, do you feel over-regulated, because that's the other theme that we've heard over the last two years? ” Earlier in the hour, Hill also pointed out the President's poor ratings on the economy according to the latest CBS News/New York Times poll : “He received his lowest rating yet on his handling of the economy: 34 percent.” The President's six-minute monologue came near the end of the town hall after an audience member asked, “You've proposed budget changes to Medicare. I'd like to know how they still would be able to keep the 45-year promise that's been made to the American public.” CBS announced their plans for this town hall event last Friday, which came just over a month after President Obama officially announced the beginning of his reelection campaign. The transcript of the questions asked during Thursday's town hall event on CBS, along with some of President Obama's answers for context: HILL: You know, for the past four years, Mr. President, it seems that we have been hearing, whether it's on TV, at the office, around the kitchen table, things are tough, and there is some improvement. There's positive economic data coming through. Yet, sometimes it can feel like for every two steps forward, it's one step back. There's definitely a psychological component to this recovery. How, then, do we change the mind-set from things are tough, to things are turning around? SMITH: People aren't feeling it, though. That's the- just to sort of reemphasize the question. So, you can read in the Wall Street Journal and the stock market is- has recovered really well, but at the same time, there is- there are a lot of people who've stopped looking for jobs. Jobs just aren't there. OBAMA: Well, part of what's happened is that the recovery's uneven. So, certain sectors of the country are doing better than others. Manufacturing is actually doing really well, in part, because the auto industry is getting back on its feet, and that has to do with decisions that we made early in my administration to make sure that we still had those Big Three auto companies here in America, making U.S. cars and innovating so that we could compete internationally. But part of the problem is not just folks who don't have work. It's also folks who have work seeing their incomes flat-line, and that is a decade-long trend. That's part of the reason I ran for President was because too many folks were losing ground. Between 2000 and 2009, during that decade, the average income for American families actually went down. Even though, as you said, the stock market was booming, corporate profits were way up, CEO pay was- SMITH: Up 27 percent in the last year. OBAMA: That's exactly right. So part of what's happened also is some structural changes in the economy, where it used to be that there was broad-based shared prosperity, now if companies are doing really well, they're not necessarily hiring back workers. They're just figuring out how to do more with fewer workers. That may increase profits, but it doesn't help folks who are looking for a job, and oftentimes, that outlook puts a lot of pressure on the people who are already on the job. So, some of the changes that are taking place in the economy are ones that took a decade or two to get to, and it's gonna take us several years for us to get back to where we need to be.
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on May 12, 2011. Filed under