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Obama Income Inequality

September 17, 2013 by · Comments Off on Obama Income Inequality 

Obama Income Inequality, President Barack Obama positioned himself as a president fighting against income inequality, while accusing some Republicans of wanting to “accelerate” a trend that shows the wealthiest Americans reaping most of the benefits in the slow-growing economy.

“You’ve got a portion of Congress whose policies don’t just want to, you know, leave things alone, they actually want to accelerate these trends,” Obama said in an interview aired Sunday on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.” The interview was recorded on Friday.

The president was responding to a question about a recent University of California, Berkeley, study that found 95% of income gains from 2009 to 2012 went to the top 1% of earners. In short, the study found, the slow economic growth the United States has experienced since the economic crash of 2008 has primarily favored top earners, while incomes for the vast majority of people have stagnated.

Obama made the case that Republicans’ congressional agenda would further widen the income gap.

“There’s no serious economist out there that would suggest that, if you took the Republican agenda of slashing education further, slashing Medicare further, slashing research and development further, slashing investments in infrastructure further, that that would reverse some of these trends of inequality,” Obama said.

While Obama put a great deal of the blame on Republicans during the interview, he also acknowledged that “the president can stop” income inequality.

The debate over the income gap comes just weeks before the U.S. could surpass its debt limit.

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