Here’s a running transcript of President Obama’s remarks on raising the debt ceiling at a news conference on Jan. 14, 2013. Remarks are being updated as they become available.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Please have a seat everybody. Good morning.
I thought it might make sense to take some questions this week, as my first term comes to an end. It’s been a busy and productive four years, and I expect the same for the next four years. I intend to carry out the agenda that I campaigned on -- an agenda for new jobs, new opportunity, and new security for the middle class.
Right now, our economy is growing and our businesses are creating new jobs. So, we are poised for a good year if we make smart decisions and sound investments, and as long as Washington politics don’t get in the way of America’s progress.
As I said on the campaign, one component to growing our economy and broadening opportunity for the middle class is shrinking our deficits in a balanced and responsible way. And for nearly two years now, I’ve been fighting for such a plan, one that would reduce our deficits by $4 trillion over the next decade, which would stabilize our debt and our deficit in a sustainable way for the next decade.
OBAMA: That would be enough not only to stop the growth of our debt relative to the size of our economy, but it would make it manageable so it doesn’t crowd out the investments we need to make in people and education and job training and scientist and medical research, all the things that help us grow.
Now, step by step, we’ve made progress towards that goal. Over the past two years, I’ve signed into law about $1.4 trillion in spending cuts. Two weeks ago, I signed into law more than $600 billion in new revenue, by making sure the wealthiest Americans begin to pay their fair share.
When you add the money that we’ll save in interest payments on the debt, altogether that adds up to a total of about $2.5 trillion in deficit reduction over the past two years, not counting the $400 billion already saved from winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
So we’ve made progress. We are moving towards our ultimate goal of getting to a $4 trillion reduction. And there will be more deficit reduction when Congress decides what to do about the $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts that have been pushed off until next month.
The fact is, though, we can’t finish the job of deficit reduction through spending cuts alone. The cuts we’ve already made to priorities other than Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and defense mean that we spend on everything from education to public safety less as a share of our economy than it has -- than has been true for a generation. And that’s not a recipe for growth. So we’ve got to do more both to stabilize our finances over the medium and long term, but also spur more growth in the short term.
Now, I’ve said I’m open to making modest adjustments to programs like Medicare to protect them from future generations. And I’ve also that we need more revenue through tax reform, by closing loopholes in our tax code for the wealthiest Americans. If we combine a balanced package of savings from spending on health care and revenues from closing loopholes, we can solve the deficit issue without sacrificing our investments in things like education that are going to help us grow.
President Obama’s news conference on the debt ceiling, fiscal battles and gun control, Jan. 14, 2013 (Transcript)
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President Obama’s news conference on the debt ceiling, fiscal battles and gun control, Jan. 14, 2013 (Transcript)
