Yesterday, President Obama visited the Amazon Fulfillment Center in Chattanooga, Tennessee to discuss his plan to create jobs and grow the economy from the middle out, not the top down. Just before speaking to a crowd of Amazon employees, the President sat down for a "Kindle Singles Interview," a new long-form interview series for Amazon's e-reader.

During the conversation with Kindle Singles editor David Blum, the President explained how his past has informed his policies as President, and discussed his plans to spur growth for middle-class families and create more ladders of opportunity. You can download the interview now at www.amazon.com/kindlesingles. 

The Kindle Singles Interview with President Obama is available on Kindle devices and free Kindle reading apps for iPhone, iPad, Android tablets and phones, Windows Phone, Blackberry, PC and Mac. Get the reading apps at www.amazon.com/kindleapps.

President Barack Obama delivers remarks on the economy at the Amazon Chattanooga Fulfillment Center in Chattnooga, Tenn., July 30, 2013. (Official White House Photo by Amanda Lucidon)

President Obama traveled to Chattanooga, Tennessee today to talk about the first and most important cornerstone of middle class security: a good job in a durable, growing industry.

“We should be doing everything we can as a country to create more good jobs that pay good wages,” President Obama said. And plenty of independent economists, business owners, and people from both parties are already in agreement on some of the ingredients that we need for creating good jobs, he explained:

Putting people back to work rebuilding America’s infrastructure. Equipping our kids and our workers with the best skills. Leading the world in scientific research that helps to pave the way for new jobs in new industries. Accelerating our clean energy and natural gas revolutions. Fixing a broken immigration system so that American workers aren’t undercut, undermined because some businesses are unscrupulous and hiring folks and not paying them decent wages.

“We're not lacking for ideas, we're just lacking action, especially out of Washington,” he said.

"So I’m going to try offering something that serious people in both parties should be able to support:  a deal that simplifies the tax code for our businesses and creates good jobs with good wages for middle-class folks who work at those businesses." 

Yesterday, the White House released a report that provides further evidence that commonsense, bipartisan immigration reform would provide economic benefits for our nation’s agriculture sector, our workforce, and rural communities. The report highlights the strong growth states’ agriculture sectors have seen in recent years and underscores how that growth can support other parts of our economy – especially in rural communities focused on agricultural development. In fact, in many of these communities, a temporary  worker program and an earned path to citizenship will boost farm output and produce other positive spillover effects. Coupled with a decline in native-born rural populations, the strength and continuity of rural America is contingent on commonsense immigration reform that improves job opportunity, provides local governments with the tools they need to succeed, and increases economic growth. 

In June, the Senate passed historic legislation that is largely consistent with the President’s principles for commonsense immigration reform with a strong bipartisan vote. This bill would strengthen border security, while providing an earned path to citizenship for undocumented farmworkers who are vital to our nation’s agriculture industry, and a new temporary worker program negotiated by major grower associations and farmworker groups. If enacted, the Senate bill would result in undocumented workers paying a fine, their full share of taxes and is estimated to allow an estimated 1.5 million agricultural workers and their dependents to earn legal status. A diverse group of stakeholders know this: it’s a major reason why they are calling on the House to join the Senate in acting to fix our broken immigration system in a way that requires responsibility from everyone — both from workers here illegally and from those who hire them—and guarantees that everyone is playing by the same rules. 

Dr. Jill Biden talks with members of the USS Fitzgerald during their stop in Singapore. (Photo Credit: Jay C. Pugh)

Before leaving Singapore this past weekend, I had the opportunity to attend a BBQ with U.S. service members and their families stationed in Singapore, as well as crewmen from the USS Fitzgerald, docked in Singapore at the time. Joe and I also visited with service members, their families, and DOD employees in Hawaii, at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam. When Joe and I travel, we love nothing more than to meet with our men and women in uniform and their families to thank them for their service and sacrifice.

Military families face so many challenges, as spouses get deployed and families move around. When I was in Singapore, I met a woman who was in the Navy and she told me that this was her 14th move. As a military mom, I understand a bit of what these families are going through. Our son Beau was deployed for a year to Iraq as a member of the Delaware Army National Guard and our son Hunter is an Ensign in the Navy Reserves. This experience, as well as the joys and concerns we heard from military families as we traveled around the world led First Lady Michele Obama and I to start Joining Forces. It is our hope that we can rally all Americans to support our veterans and military families. Joining Forces brings together public and private resources to help with the employment, education, and wellness of our veterans, servicemen and women, and their families.

Prices for personal consumption expenditures (PCE) on health care goods and services rose just 1.1 percent over the twelve months ending in May 2013, the slowest rate of increase in nearly 50 years. The slowdown in PCE health care inflation has been widespread, with important contributions from two large components: hospital and nursing home services (which comprise 42 percent of total health care expenditures) and outpatient services (which comprise 34 percent of total health care expenditures). As the chart below shows, since March 2010, these two components of health spending have made notably smaller contributions to overall consumer health care inflation than in previous years.

The slowdown in consumer health care price inflation is consistent with a broad array of other evidence suggesting that the growth rate of health care costs is slowing:

• Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Employer Costs for Employee Compensation survey indicate that for private sector employers offering health insurance, the annualized growth rate of real (inflation-adjusted) costs for workers’ health insurance has slowed from 2.2 percent a year from 2006:Q4 to 2009:Q4 to 1.8 percent a year from 2009:Q4 to 2012:Q4, with a particularly marked slowdown occurring at smaller establishments. For establishments with fewer than 50 employees, employers’ real costs for workers’ health insurance grew just 1.0 percent a year from 2009:Q4 to 2012:Q4, half the rate observed over the preceding three years. 
• During the past several years, the Congressional Budget Office reports that it “has made a series of downward adjustments to its projections of spending for Medicaid and Medicare.” For example, “mostly reflecting the slower growth in the programs’ spending in recent years,” CBO now expects combined spending on the two programs to be about $200 billion lower in 2020 than what it forecast three years ago.
• From 2009 to 2011, nationwide real per capita health expenditures grew at the slowest pace since reporting began in 1960. 
• In 2012, premium growth for employer-sponsored insurance was at its lowest rate (3 percent) since the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey started in 1996.
• In 13 states that have publicly reported premiums for 2014, the average of the lowest-cost plan is nearly 20 percent below projections based on CBO premiums. This includes New York State, which recently announced that health insurance rates in 2014 will be at least 50 percent lower, on average, than the plans currently available in the state. These substantially more affordable plans will soon be available through the new Health Insurance Marketplace established by the Affordable Care Act. 

Today, the White House released a new report detailing the important benefits provided by the bipartisan Senate immigration reform bill for the domestic agriculture sector, its workforce, and rural American communities. As the report states, in recent years, the agriculture sector has seen strong growth, with farm income and agriculture exports both reaching historic highs. But there’s more work to do, and currently the agriculture industry is hampered by a broken immigration system that fails to support a predictable and stable workforce. Among all economic sectors, the U.S. agriculture sector is particularly reliant on foreign-born workers. Agricultural producers cite difficulty in locating qualified available authorized workers—both foreign and domestic—as one reason for the high rate of undocumented labor. Moreover, there continues to be insufficient U.S. workers to fill labor needs: of those crop workers surveyed between 2007 and 2009, 71 percent were foreign born.

As President Obama said in his State of the Union address, "If we’re truly committed to strengthening our middle class and providing more ladders of opportunity to those who are willing to work hard to make it into the middle class, we’ve got to fix the system. We have to bring this shadow economy into the light so that everybody is held accountable — businesses for who they hire, and immigrants for getting on the right side of the law. That’s common sense. And that’s why we need comprehensive immigration reform."

In June, the Senate passed historic legislation that is largely consistent with the President’s principles for commonsense immigration reform with a strong bipartisan vote. This bill would strengthen border security while providing an earned path to citizenship for undocumented farmworkers who are vital to our nation’s agriculture industry, and a new temporary worker program negotiated by major grower associations and farmworker groups. If enacted, the Senate bill would result in undocumented workers paying a fine, their full share of taxes and is estimated to allow an estimated 1.5 million agricultural workers and their dependents to earn legal status.

To learn more about how the Senate-passed bill and bipartisan commonsense immigration reform would benefit the agriculture sector and rural communities, check out this fact sheet or read the full report released today by the White House.

President Obama tells the American people about his speech at Knox College on Wednesday, where he discussed the cornerstones of what it means to be middle class, including having a good job, a home that is your own, quality education, a secure retirement, and affordable health care.

Transcript | Download mp4 | Download mp3

Learn more: 

• President Obama Lays Out a Better Bargain for the Middle Class
• Speak Out in Favor of a Better Bargain for the Middle Class

In September 2009, the President announced that—for the first time in history—White House visitor records would be made available to the public on an ongoing basis. Today, the White House releases visitor records that were generated in April 2013. Today’s release also includes visitor records generated prior to September 16, 2009 that were requested by members of the public in June 2013 pursuant to the White House voluntary disclosure policy. This release brings the total number of records made public by this White House to more than 3.3 million—all of which can be viewed in our Disclosures section.

Ed. note: For more information, check out Ethics.gov.

This week, the President hosted the NCAA Champion Louisville Cardinals, the President of Vietnam, pressed for the passage of comprehensive immigration reform, and laid out his vision of growing the economy from the middle class out, while traveling to Illinois, Missouri, and Florida.