奥巴马总统在2019年《华尔街日报》CEO理事会年会英语演讲稿.doc

奥巴马总统在2019年华尔街日报CEO理事会年会英语演讲稿 THE PRESIDENT: Thank you so much. (Applause.) Everybody, please have a seat. Thankyou.Well, it is wonderful to be here,and I always look forward to an opportunity to speak tosome of our topbusinesses across the country who are hiring people, investing inAmerica,making the economy run. And many of youIve had a chance to interact with before. Asyou know, oftentimes when I do something like this, I want to spendmore time answeringquestions and having a conversation than giving any formalremarks. Let me just provide alittlebit of an introduction.Obviously, over the last coupleof months, most of the oxygen in this town has beenconsumed with two things -one, the government shutdown and the possibility of default thatwas ultimatelyresolved; and the second has been the rollout of the Affordable Care Act andthefact that my website is not working the way its supposed to. And its entirely legitimate thatthose havebeen issues of great concern.The impact of the shutdown andthe threat of default I think not only did some significantdamage to theeconomy at a time when we didnt need self-inflicted wounds, but it also spoketosome of the larger problems weve seen here in Washington, and the sense ofdysfunction andthe seeming incapacity of both parties in Congress to worktogether to advance an agendathats going to help us grow.With respect to the AffordableCare Act, I think people are legitimately concerned becausewe have a majorproblem with health care in this country - 41 million people withouthealthinsurance, a lot of people underinsured. And once again, how we fix a health care systemthats been broken fortoo many people for too long I think ends up speaking to how muchconfidence wehave in government and whether we still have the capacity, collectively, tobringabout changes that are going to be good for our economy, good for ourbusinesses, good for theAmerican people.I do want to say, though, thatbeyond the headlines, we have made real progress in theeconomy, and sometimesthat hasnt gotten enough attention. Some of the tough decisions thatwe made early on have paid off -decisions that helped us not only recover from a crisis, butbegin to lay astronger foundation for future growth.We refocused on manufacturingexports, and today, our businesses sell more goods andservices made in Americathan ever before around the world. Aftera decade of shedding jobs,our manufacturing sector has now added about half amillion new jobs, and its led by anAmerican auto industry that has comeroaring back after decades of decline.We decided to reverse ourdependence on foreign oil, and today, we generate morerenewable energy thanever before and more natural gas than anybody in the world. And for thefirst time in nearly 20 years,America now produces more of our own oil than we buy from othercountries.When I took office, we invested afraction of what other countries did in wirelessinfrastructure, and today, itsup nearly 50 percent, helping companies unleash jobs,innovation and a boomingapp economy thats created more than 500,000 jobs. When I tookoffice, only 5 percent of theworlds smartphones ran on American operating systems. Today,more than 80 percent do.And its not just in thehigh-tech economy that were seeing progress. For example,American farmers are on pace to have one of their bestyears in decades, and they haveconsistently been able to export more, makemore profits and help restore rural economiesthan when we came into office.And, yes, we decided to take on abroken health care system. And even though the rollout ofthe new health caremarketplace has been rough, to say the least, about half a millionAmericansare now poised to gain health care coverage beginning January 1st. Thats after onlya month of sign-up. We also have seen health care costs growingat the slowest rate in 50 years.Employer-based health costs are growing at about one-third of the rateof a decade ago, andthat has an impact on your bottom line.And after years oftrillion-dollar deficits, we reined in spending, wound down two wars, andbeganto change a tax code that I believe was too skewed towards the wealthiest amongus atthe expense of the middle class. And since I took office, we have now cut our deficits by morethan half.Add it all up, and businesseslike yours have created 7.8 million new jobs over the past 44months. Weve gone farther and recovered faster thanmost other advanced nations. And so inalot of ways, America is poised for a breakout. We are in a good position to compete aroundthe world in the 21stcentury.The question is, are we going torealize that potential? And that meansthat weve still gotsome more work to do. Our stock markets and corporate profits are soaring, but weve gottomake sure that this remains a country where everyone who works hard can getahead. Andthat means weve still got toaddress long-term unemployment. We stillhave to addressstagnant wages and stagnant incomes.And frankly, weve got to stopgoverning by crisis here in this town. Because if it werent forWashingtons dysfunction, I think all of usagree wed be a lot further along. Theshutdown andthe threat of default harmed our jobs market, they cost oureconomy about $5 billion, andeconomists predict it will slow our GDP growththis quarter - and it didnt need to happen. Itwas self-inflicted. We shouldnot be injuring ourselves every few months. We should be investingin ourselves. And in a sensible world, that starts with a budget that cuts what we dontneed,closes wasteful loopholes, and helps us afford to invest in the thingsthat we know will helpbusinesses like yours and the economy as a whole -education, infrastructure, basic researchand development.We would have a grand bargain formiddle-class jobs that combines tax reform with afinancing mechanism that letsus create jobs, rebuilding infrastructure that your businessesdepend on, butwe havent gotten as much take-up from the other side as wed like to see sofar.We have the opportunity forbipartisan authority to negotiate the best trade deals possible sobusinessesand workers can take advantage of new markets that are opening up aroundtheworld. We havent seen the kind oftake-up from the other side that wed like to see so far.Weve got the opportunity to fixa broken immigration system that strengthens oureconomy and our nationalsecurity. The good news here is theSenate has already passed abipartisan bill that economists say would grow oureconomy by $1.4 trillion and shrink ourdeficits by nearly a trillion over thenext two decades. You wouldnt turn downa deal that good,and Congress shouldnt either. So Im hoping that Speaker Boehner and theHouse ofRepresentatives can still work with us to get that done.And we need to be going all outto prepare our kids and our workers for the demands of a21st-centuryeconomy. Ive proposed giving everychild an early start at success by making high-quality preschool available toevery four-year-old in America. We knowthat you get more bangfor the buck when it comes to early childhood educationthan just about anything else, andyouve got great examples around thecountry, oftentimes in red states, that are doing just that.We need to make that same investment.Were working to bring down thecosts of a college degree so more young people can get ahigher education. And one thing that Im very excited about -and this has been a goodexample of a public-private partnership - is the ideaof redesigning our high schools to makesure that more young people gethands-on training and develop the skills that they need,particularly in math,science and engineering, that businesses are looking for. And in fact, todaywere announcing acompetitive grant program that will encourage more high schools topartner withcolleges and local businesses to better prepare our kids for college or acareer. Andin December, Ill bebringing together college presidents and other leaders to figure out waystohelp more low-income students attend and to succeed in college.So just to sum up, my basicmessage is this: We know what thechallenges are. We knowwhat thesolutions are. Some of them are tough,but whats holding us back is not a lack of goodpolicy ideas or even what usedto be considered good bipartisan policy ideas. We just have tobreak through the stubborn cycle of crisis politics andstart working together. Moreobstruction,more brinkmanship wont help anybody. It doesnt help folks politically. My understanding isnobody in this town isdoing particularly well at the moment when it comes to the opinions oftheAmerican people, but it certainly doesnt help anybody economically.On many of the issues, I thinkyou and I would agree, and I want you to know that Imrooting for yoursuccess, and I look forward to making sure that we are able in theremainingthree years that Im President to work together to not only improve thebusinessclimate, but also improve the prospects for Americans all across thecountry who have beentreading water, feel like theyre losing ground, areanxious about the future and their childrensfutures, but I think are stillhopeful and still possess that fundamental American optimism. Ifthey see leadership working across theboard on their behalf, then Im confident that we canmake enormous progress.So with that, why dont we getJerry up here and Ill start answering his questions. I hope headds some input. (Laughter.) If he starts asking me about whathappened to the Kansas CityChiefs, Im not sure Ill have a good answer forthat one. (Applause.)Well, thank you, Mr. President. Let me start by thanking you officially forjoining us today. Ithink you probablysee a lot of familiar faces out there, most friendly, most of them. And I wouldalso note that youre gettinghere a little late. Congressman PaulRyan is coming later. He isgoing to gethere a little early. So if you guysoverlap a little bit, maybe we can just get someproblems solved righthere. What do you think?THE PRESIDENT: Lets do it. (Laughter.) Lets do it.Its your chance. We have talked amongst ourselves or tried tosort of take the sense of theroom. So Imgoing to try to reflect some of the conversations that have been going on hereinthe questions Im going to ask you. Youll not be stunned that Im going to ask you abouthealth care first.You indicated there and youveindicated publicly quite clearly that the rollout has beendifficult. What do you think youve learned from thisexperience about the governments abilityto do this sort of thing, about thelaw itself, or about your own administration?THE PRESIDENT: Well, there are a couple of things. Number one is that this has been abigproblem for a very long time and so it was always going to be challenging notjust to pass alaw, but also to implement it. Theres a reason why, despite a century of talking about it,nobody hadbeen able to successfully try to deal with some of the underlying problems inthehealth care system.The good news is that many of theelements of the Affordable Care Act are already in placeand are workingexactly the way theyre supposed to. Somaking sure that consumers who haveemployer-based health insurance are gettinga better deal and that are protected from some ofthe fine print that left themin the lurch when they actually got sick - thats in place. Makingsure that young people under the ageof 26 can stay on their parents plan - thats helped 3million childrenalready. Thats making adifference. Helping seniors to getbetter prescriptiondrug prices - thats already helped millions of seniorsand billions of dollars in savings. Rebatesfor people who see insurance companies who are not spendingenough on actual care, more onadministrative costs or profits, theyre gettingrebates. They may not know its theAffordableCare Act thats giving them rebates, but its happening. So there were a number of things thatwerealready in place over the last three years that got implemented effectively.The other thing that hasnt beentalked about a lot is cost. There was a lot of skepticismwhen we passed theAffordable Care Act that we were going to be giving a lot of people care butwewerent doing anything about the underlying costs. And, in fact, over the last three years,weveseen health care costs grow at the slowest pace in 50 years. And that affects the bottomlines ofeverybody here.And there are a lot of smartdelivery system reforms that slowly across the system are beingimplemented andtheyre making a big difference. Andthats saving us money. Thats why, bytheway, some of the projections that in terms of what the Affordable Care Actwould do to deficitshave actually proved even better than we had originallyexpected.What I have learned, though, withrespect to setting up these marketplaces - which areessentially mechanismswhere people who are currently in the individual market or dont havehealthinsurance at all can join together, shop, and insurance companies will competefor theirbusiness - setting those things up is very challenging justmechanically.The good news is that choice andcompetition has actually worked and insurers came in withbids that were evenlower than people expected - about 16 percent lower than had originallybeenprojected.The challenge has been justmaking sure that consumers are actually able to get on awebsite, see thosechoices, and shop. And I think that weprobably underestimated thecomplexities of building out a website that neededto work the way it should.There is a larger problem that Iprobably - speak personally, but also as theadministration - could haveidentified earlier, and that is the way the federal government doesprocurementand does IT is just generally not very efficient. In fact, theres probably no biggergapbetween the private sector and the public sector than IT.And weve seen that in, forexample, the VA and the Department of Defense trying to dealwith electronicmedical records for our servicemen as they move into civilian life. Most of thatstuff is still done on paper. Weve spent billions of dollars - Im notsaying we as in myadministration, I mean weve now had about a decade ofexperimentation, spent billions ofdollars and its still not working the wayit should.So what we probably needed to doon the front end was to blow up how we procure for IT,especially on a systemthis complicated. We did not do thatsuccessfully. Now, we are gettingitfixed, but it would have been better to do it on the front end rather than theback end.And the last point Ill make isthat in terms of expectation setting, theres no doubt that inan environmentin which we had to fight tooth and nail to get this passed, it ended upbeingpassed on a partisan basis - not for lack of trying, because I met with anawful lot ofRepublicans to try to get them to go along - but because therewas just ideological resistanceto the idea of dealing with the uninsured andpeople with preexisting conditions. There was aprice to that, and it was that what was already going to behard was operating within a verydifficult political environment. And we should have anticipated that thatwould create arockier rollout than if Democrats and Republicans were bothinvested in success.One of the problems weve had isone side of Capitol Hill is invested in failure, and thatmakes, I think, thekind of iterative process of fixing glitches as they come up and fine-tuningthe law more challenging. But Imoptimistic that we can get it fixed.Well, thats the question I was going toask next. Is it possible youve lostenough time hereand enough potential customers in the exchanges that yourenot going to reach the criticalmass of signups that you need to make themarketplace work? Is that a danger thatyou have toworry about right now?THE PRESIDENT: Well, its something that we have to payattention to. But keep in mindthat thismodel of marketplaces was based on what was done in Massachusetts, andtheexperience in Massachusetts was that in the first month, 153 or 163 people signedup out ofan ultimate 36,000. It wasless than 1 percent signed up in that first month - partly becausebuyinginsurance is a complicated process for a lot of people. When they have more choices, itmeans thattheyre going to take more time.Theres no doubt that weve lostsome time, but the website is getting better each week. Bythe end of this month, it will befunctioning for the majority of people who are using it. Theyllbe able to shop, see what theirchoices are. The prices are good. The prices are not changingduring the openenrollment period that goes out until March. And so I think that were going tohave time to catch up.Whats also been expressed as aconcern is the mix of people that sign up. So we mightend up having millions of people sign up; theyre happy withtheir new coverage, but weve gotmore people who are older, more likely to getsick than younger and healthier. Wevegot tomonitor that carefully. We alwaysanticipated, though, that younger folks would be the last folksin, justbecause - its been a while since you and I were young - but as I recall, youdont thinkthat youre going to get sick at that time.So, look, I am confident that themodel that weve built, which works off of the existingprivate insurancesystem, is one that will succeed. We aregoing to have to, A, fix the website soeverybody feels confident aboutthat. Were going to have to obviouslyre-market and re-brand,and that will be challenging in this politicalenvironment.But keep in mind, in the firstmonth we also had 12 million people visit the site. Thedemand is there. There are 41 million people who dont havehealth insurance. The folks intheindividual market, many of them are going to get a much better deal in themarketplaces.And so weve just got tokeep on improving the customer experience and make sure that werefending offefforts not to fix the problem - because if somebody wants to help us fix it,Im allgame, but fending off eff