President Obama thanked Congress for voting to extend the payroll-tax cut on Friday but emphasized it was just “an important short-term step to strengthen our economy."
While Obama highlighted how the extension will help middle class families and said he would sign it right away, he used the vote to argue a larger point – one that he has been pushing for the past several months – that the country needs “to deal with a set of economic challenges that existed even before this recession hit.”
“We have a choice right now,” Obama said at a Boeing production facility in Everett, Wash. “We can either settle for a country where a few people do really well, and everyone else struggles to get by. Or we can restore an economy where everybody gets a fair shot, and everybody does their fair share, and everybody plays by the same set of rules, from Washington to Wall Street to Main Street.”
Obama also said the vote was a case of Congress moving beyond partisan politics, something it should do more of.
"It is amazing what happens when Congress focuses on doing the right thing instead of just playing politics," he said. "This was a good example and Congress should take pride in it."
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