Obama touts recent legislative accomplishment to help jobs, economy

On Friday the Labor Department released its monthly jobs report showing the United States added a dismal 80,000 jobs in June and the unemployment rate remained unchanged at 8.2 percent. One day later, President Barack Obama released his weekly radio address where he touted a piece of legislation that would help the economy. One aspect of the legislation would help keep construction workers on the job and allow for other projects to begin. The other part would keep student loan interest rates from doubling, which would have affected more than 7 million students nationwide.

Had Congress not been able to work together to get the measures passed, thousands of construction workers would have lost their jobs and the extra amount of money each student would have had to spend on the economy would have gone instead toward paying off their loans. Still, President Obama said those items were not enough and in light of the latest jobs report, it was imperative that Congress did more to help the economy and job growth pick up speed. He said to do that he wanted to take half the money we were no longer spending on war and use it to build roads, bridges and wireless networks in our own country. He also wanted to expand financial aid to 2 million students so they could have the opportunity to learn the skills that businesses need right now.