奥巴马演讲:That Time You Interviewed the President
This afternoon the President sat down to answer some of the questions on the minds of Americans across the country. The questions were submitted and voted on in a process open to the public, conducted through YouTube. It’s no surprise that the questions didn’t match up up perfectly with what the White House hears from the beltway press and pundits every day, after all it was intended as an opportunity for the public to ask precisely those kinds of questions. It made for an interesting interview.
One good example was a question about what’s called “net neutrality”:
MR. GROVE: Great. Well, let’s move back to the questions. And I got to tell you, the number one question that came in, in the jobs and economy category had to do with the Internet. And it came from James Earlywine in Indianapolis. He said: “An open Internet is a powerful engine for economic growth and new jobs. Letting large companies block and fill their online content services would stifle needed growth. What is your commitment to keeping Internet open and neutral in America?”
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I’m a big believer in net neutrality. I campaigned on this. I continue to be a strong supporter of it. My FCC Chairman, Julius Genachowski, has indicated that he shares the view that we’ve got to keep the Internet open; that we don’t want to create a bunch of gateways that prevent somebody who doesn’t have a lot of money but has a good idea from being able to start their next YouTube or their next Google on the Internet. So this is something we’re committed to.
We’re getting pushback, obviously, from some of the bigger carriers who would like to be able to charge more fees and extract more money from wealthier customers. But we think that runs counter to the whole spirit of openness that has made the Internet such a powerful engine for not only economic growth, but also for the generation of ideas and creativity.
Interview of the President by YouTube Library
WITH STATE OF THE UNION Q&A
1:45 P.M. EST
MR. GROVE: Hello, everyone. We’re here at the White House today for a very unique event — an exclusive interview with President Obama in which the questions come from American people who have submitted them and chosen them online. My name is Steve Grove and I’m the news and politics at YouTube.
Mr. President, thank you for taking the time to answer these questions today.
THE PRESIDENT: It’s my pleasure. Thank you, Steve. Thanks for having me and thanks to YouTube for doing this. We had a chance to do this before I was elected and had a great time, so I’m glad we can do it again.
MR. GROVE: Great. Well, let’s tell people a little bit about how this works. Five days ago as you were delivering your State of the Union address, we opened up our moderator platform on YouTube, where thousands of people have been submitting and voting on both video and text questions. Some of them, as you’ll see, were hard-hitting; others were emotional; some were even funny — but all of the questions you’ll see here today were voted into the top tier of the thousands of questions we received. And none of them have been chosen by the White House or seen by the President. So this should be a lot of fun.
Mr. President, let’s let laymanmarcus from Silver Spring, Maryland, kick us off. He submitted this video to remind us of where things were a year ago.
(A video is shown.)
Mr. Marcus writes: “Mr. President, I know there have been political setbacks to getting health care reform done. The 40 million people who have no insurance can’t wait. Will they be able to get insurance this year?”
THE PRESIDENT: It is my greatest hope that we can get this done not just a year from now, but soon. We came extremely close. We now have a bill that’s come out from the House, come out from the Senate. That’s unprecedented. And if you look at the core components of that legislation, what you have is 30 million people who get coverage, insurance reform so that people who have health insurance are going to be able to be protected from not being able to get it because of preexisting conditions or suddenly losing their health care because the insurance company has some fine print that they didn’t read. It makes sure that we actually start bending the cost curve, controlling the rise in premiums, by instituting better practices in terms of how we reimburse doctors and how we ask hospitals to work together. We’ve already invested in electronic IT, electronic medical records, things that can help make the system more efficient.
So we had this enormous opportunity, but the way the rules work in the United States Senate, you’ve got to have 60 votes for everything. After the special election in Massachusetts, we now only have 59. We are calling on our Republican colleagues to get behind a serious health reform bill, one that actually provides not only the insurance reforms for people who do have health insurance but also the coverage for folks who don’t.
My hope is, is that they accept that invitation and that they work with us together over the next several weeks to get it done.
MR. GROVE: A lot of people that submitted questions were sort of frustrated with the process of all of health care, and the number one question we got in health care came from Mr. Anderson in Texas who asked: “Why are the health care meetings and procedures not on C-SPAN as promised?” And then one of the top questions in the government reform category was Warren Hunter in Brooklyn, who said: “How do you expect people in this country to trust you when you’ve repeatedly broken promises that were made on the campaign trail, most recently the promise to have a transparent health care debate?”
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I guess, first of all, I would say that we have been certified by independent groups as the most transparent White House in history. It’s important to understand. We are the first White House since the founding of the republic to list every visitor that comes into the White House online so that you can look it up. People know more about the inner workings of this White House, the meetings we have. We’ve excluded lobbyists from boards and commissions, but we also report on any lobbyist who meets with anybody who’s part of our — part of our administration.
So we’ve actually followed through on a lot of the commitments that we’d made. And so Warren is mistaken in terms of how he characterized it.
What is fair to say is that as the health care process went forward, not every single aspect of it was on C-SPAN. Now, keep in mind, most of the action was in Congress, so every committee hearing that was taking place, both in the House and the Senate, those were all widely televised. The only ones that were not were meetings that I had with some of the legislative leadership trying to get a sense from them in terms of what it was that they were trying to do.
I think it is a fair criticism. I’ve acknowledged that. And that’s why as we move forward making sure that in this last leg, these five yards before we get to the goal line, that everybody understands exactly what’s going on in the health care bill, that there are no surprised, no secrets. That’s going to be an imperative. It’s going to be one of my highest priorities.
MR. GROVE: Well, the central focus of your State of the Union was obviously jobs. And a lot of people wrote in asking for some clarity around some of your plans for small businesses. I’m going to play you two video questions in a row.
Q “Good evening, President Obama. One year ago today my wife and I were both let go from our jobs in corporate America within 48 hours of each other. We’ve since started a small business and we employ a couple people around us. What is being done to free up funding and encourage the growth of other small businesses that have such a tremendous impact on our economy? Thank you.”
Q “Colin Callahan, Costa Mesa, California. Mr. President, how exactly are you planning on helping small businesses grow and prosper, besides simply providing tax breaks?”
THE PRESIDENT: Well, let me start with some specific issues that confront every small business all across the country, and it’s absolutely true that if we can get small businesses back on their feet then that’s going to go a long way towards bringing the unemployment rate down because that’s the fastest generator of jobs across the country.
Number one, small businesses really are still struggling with financing. You hear stories everywhere you go that even profitable, successful businesses are having trouble getting financing because banks, frankly, just don’t want to take the risk. After having taken way too many risks before, now they’re taking no risk. And small businesses are punished for that.
So we’ve expanded the SBA loan — the Small Business Administration loan portfolio by about 70 percent. We’ve been waiving guarantees and fees, trying to streamline the process, just to get more capital into the hands of small businesses. That’s point number one.
Point number two then are the tax breaks that were alluded to. It is important to see if we can give more incentives to small business. So, for example, we’re just eliminating capital gains for small business — which is particularly important if you’ve got a start-up; 10 years from now you may end up being successful with your small business but suddenly you’ve got to pay taxes on it. If you can take that money and, instead of paying Uncle Sam, reinvest it in your business, you can grow it further. So we think that that’s the kind of strategy that makes a lot of sense.
We want to also make sure that we’re providing tax credits for hiring of small business — small businesses that are hiring new employees. And so we’ve got a whole range of proposals there.
Now, in addition to the tax credits, in addition to the financing, one of the other things that, frankly, small businesses need is just a economic environment that is growing. And one of the things we’re very proud of is the fact that we had a 6 percent contraction of the economy at the beginning of last year — this past quarter we had a 6 percent increase in the growth of the economy. That 12 percent swing offers greater opportunities for small businesses to prosper and thrive.
The last point I’d make: One of the biggest burdens on small businesses is health care costs. And probably nobody benefits more from our health care proposals than small businesses, because what we’re doing is we’re saying that not only will you get tax credits to buy health insurance, but we’re also going to let you pool — buy into a big exchange so that you have the same purchasing power as a big company like Ford or Google is able to negotiate with insurance companies and get a good deal, well, now small businesses, by pooling together in this exchange, are going to have that same leverage. That will help lower their costs.
And for a lot of small businesses, it’s not just a matter of giving health insurance to your employees; it’s also just being able to buy health insurance for yourself. That will cut down on small businesses’ costs and they’ll be able to, again, invest more in their business.
MR. GROVE: A lot of Americans saw what happened on Wall Street this past year, and they wrote in saying, when are we going to get our bailout? Here is Frederick from Florida, who submitted the number one video question in the financial reform category.
Q “Mr. President, my name is Frederick from South Florida. I have a question about your HAMP program and why the banks are reluctant to modify loans for homeowners who can afford to stay in their homes. Now, the taxpayers bailed them out. They refuse to help us out. And I would like to know what say you, Mr. President?”
THE PRESIDENT: Well, look, this is something that we’ve been dealing with since the beginning of this financial crisis. We set up a program for loan modification that so far about
4 million people have taken advantage of across the country. You’ve got about 800,000 people who’ve gotten loan modifications that are saving them an average of $550. And so these are not insignificant savings. We’ve been able to get that done.
The problem is, is the number of people whose mortgages are underwater where they actually have a home value that’s now less than their mortgage is a lot bigger than that. And you saw declining values all across the country.
So the amount of money that we’ve been able to get into this program has not met the entire need. We’re now pushing the banks as hard as we can to make sure that not only do they do the most with the resources that we’ve been giving them, but that they also do a much better job of customer service with people who are coming to them. I get letters all the time of people who’ve gone through all kinds of hoops, filled out forms; the bank doesn’t call them back, or after they’ve gone through a trial period, the bank says, well, we now think we shouldn’t give you a home modification.
What we’re trying to do is to increase transparency and force all the banks to tell us exactly what are you doing with your customers who want to stay in their homes, can’t afford to pay a mortgage, but need something a little bit more limited.
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