奥巴马演讲 在费尔法克斯一家私人庭院的演讲5

Q    If I could add to that, just one thing, which is, it’s really not necessary to replace the windows to get that energy efficiency.  Didn’t somebody write about the caulking gun（油灰枪） ?,THE PRESIDENT:  Caulking is --,Q    It’s a lot less expensive.  (Laughter.),THE PRESIDENT:  Absolutely.  Cash for caulkers.  (Laughter.)  Good point.,All right, gentleman right there.,Q    Mr. President, my name is Mark Murphy.  I’m a neighbor of John and Nicole.  Welcome to our neighborhood.,THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you.  It’s a beautiful neighborhood.,Q    And before I say anything more, I'd be remiss, and my children would be not letting me back home, if I didn’t say hi to you.,THE PRESIDENT:  What are their names?,Q    Andrew, Tim, and Ellie, and my beautiful wife, Shannon.,THE PRESIDENT:  Tell everybody I said hi.,Q    Thank you.  Now, the question I have for you is, I’m a union-side labor attorney in D.C.  And I know you have some background in that.  And your comments here today and both -- your Labor Day comments struck me and my colleagues about the shrinking middle class, and those jobs that were lost, and how you’re going to and your administration is going to replace those jobs.,I work every day with working-class, blue-collar workers; I deal with a lot of different issues.  One of the issues that is dear to my heart and I know a lot of my colleague and union members is the Employee Free Choice Act.  And for people who don't know about that, it’s just basically an act, a law that would make it easier to unionize.  And it’s proven that unions -- unionized employees get better wages and better benefits.  And unfortunately that act hasn’t been passed yet and I just wanted to hear your thoughts on that.  Thank you.,THE PRESIDENT:  Well, a little bit of background, for those who aren’t as familiar with it.  The Employee Free Choice Act is in response to 20, 30 years where it’s become more and more difficult for unions to just get a fair election and have their employers actually negotiate with them.,I mean, the laws that have been on the books have gotten more and more difficult to apply.  A lot of times, companies who may be good employers but just don’t want the bother of having a union will work very hard to make sure a union doesn’t develop.  And they will drag out the process for a very long time, and in some cases, workers who are joining unions or want to join a union or are helping to organize one may get intimidated（威胁 ，恐吓） .,And so the idea behind the Employee Free Choice Act is let’s just make the playing field even.  We don’t have to force anybody to be in a union, but if they want to join a union let’s make it a little easier for them to go ahead and sign up.,Now, the answer -- the short answer to your question is, we are very supportive of this.  Frankly, we don’t have 60 votes in the Senate.  So the opportunity to actually get this passed right now is not real high.  What we’ve done instead is try to do as much as we can administratively to make sure that it’s easier for unions to operate and that they’re not being placed at an unfair disadvantage.,Let me speak more broadly, though, about the point that you just made.  So many things we take for granted came about because of the union movement -- minimum wage, 40-hour workweek, child labor laws -- you name it -- weekends -- a lot of these things came about because people were fighting for them.  They didn't come about automatically and naturally.,The other thing that unions did, particularly in the manufacturing sector, was it gave a base for blue-collar workers to get a middle-class wage, which meant that essentially the guys working at the Ford plant could afford to buy a Ford.  And so it increased demand overall and, ironically, it meant that businesses had more customers and could make more money.,Now, we now live in an era of international competition.  And that makes it harder for businesses.  I mean I think we should acknowledge that the business environment now is much more competitive than it was back in the 1960s or ‘70s.  Technology has made it more difficult for businesses to compete.  Transportation has made it more difficult to compete.  The costs for shipping big, manufactured goods from China to the United States -- or high volumes of goods from Japan or Korea or Malaysia, or Indonesia to the United States is a lot cheaper now than it was.  So what that means is, we’ve got to be sympathetic to business concerns that they don't get priced out of the market if they're competing internationally.#p#分页标题#e#,And I think the best way to balance that is to make sure that business interests here in the United States, and labor interests -- workers’ interests here in the United States are aligned; make sure that businesses are looking after their workers and giving them a good deal.  But workers and unions also have to think about businesses and not put them in a position where they’re potentially priced out of the marketplace.,Now, I think that that balance is tilted way too far against unions these days.  And I think that actually if we had some of these businesses with employees who were there for a longer term, were more loyal, they weren’t worried about their jobs being shipped overseas, that that would actually be good for the economy as a whole and would be good for businesses here as a whole.,But we have to acknowledge that competition means that businesses and workers here in the United States have to be better trained, better skilled, more competitive, leaner, meaner. And we’ve got to invent more stuff so that we constantly are working on high-end jobs as opposed to the low-end jobs -- because the truth is the low-end jobs, we’re never going to be able to compete on the basis of price.  I mean, there’s always going to be a country -- actually, wages are starting to go up a little bit in China.  Our problem is not China.  The next is going to be Vietnam or it’s going to be Bangladesh or -- there’s always going to be someplace in the world where they pay lower wages.,Our advantage is going to be if we have higher skills, we have a workforce that works together more effectively, that our businesses are better organized -- if we have that, then I think that we can compete against anybody.,And one of -- a good example is actually Germany, which has a much higher rate of unionization（联合
，结合） than we do.  But they’ve actually been able to continue to export at very high levels and compete all around the world, mainly because they’ve got such a highly skilled workforce, they’re putting together high-end products that can compete with anybody.,Yes, right here.  A mic is coming.,Q    Hi, Mr. President.  It’s an honor.  I’m so nervous.,THE PRESIDENT:  Don’t be nervous.,Q    Oh, I am so nervous.  I love everything you’re doing.  I love your vision.  I’m so glad you got into office.  I love medical -- health care reform.  Where I come from, when we have to go to the doctor, we went to the doctor.  If we needed surgery, we got surgery.  And then I came here and found out, oh, my gosh, you need insurance -- you need this, you need that -- which I could never afford on the salary I make.  Now I’m very lucky.  My husband -- unfortunately, he is in the construction business -- but hopefully, that’s going to come back.,So my question is also -- I work for Fairfax County public schools, and I haven’t had a raise in two years and I may not even have a job next year -- because I hear it’s going to get worse before it’s going to get better.  Do you agree with that?  Like, I mean, I know it’s -- we’re starting to improve and jobs are starting to come back, but how long do you think this is going to take?  It sounds wonderful.,THE PRESIDENT:  Well, first of all, you have a better chance of keeping your job in the public school systems now, because Gerry and Jim voted to close a pretty egregious tax loophole（漏税） that was incentivizing jobs going overseas and that even some corporations that stood to benefit thought was ridiculous.  They closed that loophole in order to fund teacher jobs and police officer jobs and firefighter jobs all across the country.  So that’s been very helpful in providing assistance to school districts that are strapped.,The economy is improving.  But one of the headwinds that the economy is experiencing is actually that state and local governments have been getting really hard hit.  Now, we gave states a lot of help at the beginning of this crisis because their budgets were just imploding.  And typically state and local governments, they get hit faster by declines in tax revenues（税收） and property tax -- obviously they’re relying on property taxes, and with the housing market collapsing, that was really hitting them hard.  And so they were looking at possibly laying -- slashing 30 percent of jobs in school districts or in social services.,And one of the most effective ways of preventing this from tipping over into a Great Depression was giving them help.  The problem is some of that help is running out.  And property tax revenues haven’t improved yet; sales tax revenues haven’t improved yet as much as they’d like.  So local districts, states, are still having big budget problems, and they’ll probably have those big budget problems next year.#p#分页标题#e#,Now, the challenge we have is, ironically, that if you start laying off a whole bunch of teachers, or a whole bunch of police officers or firefighters, now they don’t have a job, which means they spend less, which means that there’s less tax revenue.  And you start getting into a vicious, downward spiral（螺旋式下降） .