Obama to ‘keep pushing’ economy

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama said Sunday he wants to “keep on pushing” the economy to keep a fragile recovery on track but also pay more attention to getting debt and deficits under control.

In an interview with NBC News, Obama said the sluggish economy combined with heavy debt will force “some very tough decisions” for his administration.
“We’re going to be have to do two things at once. We’ve got to keep on pushing to grow the economy. But we’ve also on the medium term and the long term have to get control of our deficit,” Obama said.
“And it would be ideal where we didn’t have to worry about one and could just focus on the other. But, you know, this generation, it’s fallen on our shoulders to make some very tough decisions.”
His comments came days after official figures showed US economic growth slowed to a pace of 1,6 per cent in the second quarter, suggesting the recovery was sputtering.
“We anticipated that the recovery was slowing,” Obama said.
“The economy is still growing, but it’s not growing as fast as it needs to. I’ve got things right now in – before Congress that we should move immediately... We should be passing legislation that helps small businesses get credit, that eliminates capital gains taxes so that they have more incentive to invest right now.”
The president said there are “a whole host of measures we could take, no single element of which is a magic bullet but cumulatively can start continuing to build momentum for the recovery”. – Nampa-AFP

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