Obama Calls For New ‘Square Deal’

President Barack Obama at the White House, Monday. (AP)

President Barack Obama is channeling President Theodore Roosevelt Tuesday, with a call for economic fairness that draws parallels to the progressive reformer’s calls for a “square deal” for regular Americans more than a century ago.

Obama intends to use a speech in small town Osawatomie, Kan. – where Roosevelt delivered his “New Nationalism” address in 1910 – to lay out economic themes of giving middle-class workers a fair shake and greater financial security, concepts the president will probably return to repeatedly during the 2012 campaign.

Obama is pressuring Congress to support an extension of a payroll tax cut that the White House says will give a $1,000 tax cut to a typical family earning $50,000 a year. The president is coupling that with efforts to renew a program of extended unemployment benefits set to expire Dec. 31.

The Associated Press contributed reporting.

Guest:

Gail Chaddock, congressional correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor

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J Frog

So if I pay $1000 less in “payroll tax” this year…do I get $1000 less in benefits sometime in the future? Is it possible I can get the same future benefits and just pay less for them? Or do I have to pay this $1000 back when times are better? Of course not, call it what it is….a reduction in the “Social Security Trust Fund”. I wonder how that would “poll” with the American people.
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Why fiddle with Social Security this way? Why not work on REAL tax reform.
Betsy Pike

Thanks for the laugh on your pronunciation of that small town in KS. Around here it’s pronounced ah-saw-watt’-tah-mee.

Betsy Pike from Shaw-nee, KS (a suburb of Kansas City, MO) and very liberal.
A Carroll

I see a tweet says to pronounce “Osawatomie” : “Os (like dos)-o-watt-a-me”; in the Osawatomie area, you hear Oh-suh-watt-uh-me or Aw-suh-watt-uh-me.
Joan

It is immoral for the rich to be taking from the poor. And for multinationals�
corporations such as Big oil and Big coal, Big Phram ,Big Agra and Big Defense
to be taking from tax payers revenues and ignoring their plight.

As Karl Marx said –Capitalism without a moral conscience it is a recipe for a
revolt and no doubt there is one brewing around the corner with this abuse…