By JUDITH NAMUTOWE –
THE United States of America (USA) has made progress in growing its economy although more needs to be done to improve its status.
This is according to US President Barack Obama’s 2016 and his final State of the Union address yesterday accessed by the Times of Zambia.
He said for the past seven years, his goal had been to grow the economy for the betterment of every citizen.
“For the past seven years, our goal has been a growing economy that also works better for everybody. We’ve made progress, but we need to make more.
“And despite all the political arguments that we’ve had these past few years, there are actually some areas where Americans broadly agree,” Mr Obama said.
He said America was in the middle of the longest streak of private-sector job creation in history, with more than 14 million new jobs, the strongest two years of job growth since the 1990s, an unemployment rate cut in half.
He said that was just part of a manufacturing surge that created nearly 900,000 new jobs in the past six years.
“And we’ve done all this while cutting our deficits by almost three-quarters. We agree that real opportunity requires every American to get the education and training they need to land a good-paying job.
“The bipartisan reform of ‘No Child Left Behind’ was an important start, and together, we’ve increased early childhood education, lifted high school graduation rates to new highs, boosted graduates in fields like engineering,” he said.
He also said that seven years ago, America made the single biggest investment in clean energy in its history which has resulted in cheaper wind power.
On rooftops from Arizona to New York, Mr Obama said solar was saving Americans tens of millions of dollars a year on their energy bills and employs more Americans than coal in jobs that pay better than average.