President Obama’s Weekly Address 8/18/2012 Education Is An Economic Necessity Every Family Should Be Able To Afford

From the White House; “With students starting to head back to school, President Obama discusses the critical role that education plays in America’s future.” Obama tells us, “this year, several thousand fewer educators will be going back to school. Since 2009, we’ve lost more than 300,000 education jobs, in part, because of budget cuts at the state and local level.” “That’s the opposite of what we should be doing as a country. States should be making education a priority in their budgets, even in tough fiscal times. And Congress should be willing to help out, because this affects all of us,” President Obama says. “That’s why part of the jobs bill that I sent to Congress last September included support for states to prevent further layoffs and to rehire teachers who’d lost their jobs. But here we are, a year later with tens of thousands more educators laid off, and Congress still hasn’t done anything about it.” Obama explains all that his administration has tried to do on behalf of education explaining, “because in America, higher education cannot be a luxury; it’s an economic necessity every family should be able to afford.”