One month to the day after his infamous ‘you didn’t build that’ speech, President Obama’s description of wealthy people did not include “smart” or “hardworking,” as he instead ascribed their success to good luck.
“If you’re lucky enough, and fortunate enough, and been blessed enough to be in the other two percent, the top two percent, you still get a tax cut for your first $250,000 of income,” Obama said during a campaign stop in Council Bluffs, Iowa. “All we’re saying is after that, maybe you can do a little bit more to help pay down this deficit and invest in things like education that help our economy grow.”
Obama avoided the cringe-inducing soundbite, but his remarks echoed the sense of his “you didn’t build that” speech in Virginia.
“I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart,” Obama said on July 13th. “There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help . . . If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.”
Today, the president affirmed that government must “do its part” in cutting wasteful spending, but he emphasized that the wealthy must do “a little more” in paying taxes.
