President Obama is unveiling a “Better Bargain” for the middle class today at 12:55 PM EST, a concept that harkens back to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal and Teddy Roosevelt’s Square Deal.
Like Obama’s “Better Bargain,” the Roosevelts’ similar deals were aimed at re-establishing a middle class in the presence of increasing plutocracy, a problem many Americans feel has yet again destroyed our way of life.
The White House released today an infographic-like page laying out the “cornerstones” of Obama’s “Better Bargain,” involving issues like secure housing, healthcare, retirement security, touched upon in Organizing For Action’s video (above) and described by the President ahead of today’s news conference.
Both Teddy Roosevelt and FDR introduced the idea of a middle class secure in its lifestyle and safe from big business abuses, implementing programs that ensured the majority of Americans had access to a reasonable standard of living in exchange for an honest day’s work. But many of those protections have been chipped away in the decades since the Reagan administration, with a growing permanent underclass having no access to stable housing, accessible healthcare, or a “ladder out” of poverty and wage slavery.
Yesterday on Facebook, Barack Obama’s page announced today’s speech, saying:
“The cornerstones of what it means to be middle class? Job security, education opportunities, access to affordable health care and the ability to save for retirement.”
As many, many Americans find the three tenets mentioned out of reach, the initiative seems for the first time to speak to meaningful change for many who seek a return to a thriving middle class and the basic security that slipped away over the past 30 years in the US.
A tweet sent just a few minutes ago read:
Today, President Obama will lay out his vision to keep rebuilding middle-class security: http://t.co/WbZEbM5wKs, pic.twitter.com/DrTIlNjbjw
— The White House (@whitehouse) July 24, 2013
President Obama’s “Better Bargain” speech will stream live on WhiteHouse.gov.