Weekly Address: President Obama Honors America’s Workers; Outlines Steps Taken to Strengthen the Middle Class

. We also ended a tax loophole that encouraged companies to create jobs overseas. Instead, I’m fighting to pass a law to provide tax breaks to the folks who create jobs right here in America.

But strengthening our economy means more than that.  We’re fighting to build an economy in which middle class families can afford to send their kids to college, buy a home, save for retirement, and achieve some measure of economic security when their working days are done.  And over the last two years, that has meant taking on some powerful interests who had been dominating the agenda in Washington for far too long.

That’s why we’ve put an end to the wasteful subsidies to big banks that provide student loans.  We’re going to use that money to make college more affordable for students instead. 

That’s why we’re making it easier for workers to save for retirement, with new ways of saving their tax refunds and a simpler system for enrolling in retirement plans like 401(k)s.  And we’re going to keep up the fight to protect Social Security for generations to come.

That’s why we stopped insurance companies from refusing to cover people with pre-existing conditions and dropping folks who become seriously ill. 

And that’s why we cut taxes for 95 percent of working families, and passed a law to help make sure women earn equal pay for equal work in the United States of America. 

This Labor Day, we are reminded that we didn’t become the most prosperous country in the world by rewarding greed and recklessness.  We did it by rewarding hard work and responsibility.  We did it by recognizing that we rise or we fall together as one nation – one people – all of us vested in one another.  That is how we have succeeded in the past. And that is how we will not only rebuild this economy, but rebuild it stronger than ever before.

Thank you. And I hope you have a great Labor Day weekend.