Remarks at the "Building the Best America," National Press Club

Good afternoon and thank you so much for the kind introduction. It is my privilege to be here with you at the National Press Club today.

A few weeks ago, New York Times asked, "When did optimism become uncool?" I must confess that -- as a chronic, relentless optimist -- I took it a little personally. I know my teenage kids think I'm uncool. I get that. But the Times hit on something darker within our politics -- the fact that some politicians find it expedient to exploit people's worst fears… to accentuate the negative and eliminate the positive… to turn people against each other instead of toward each other.

For all those peddling fiction that America is in decline, I'd invite them to join me on one of my "house calls." I travel the country to meet with workers, businesses, and local officials who are shaping a brighter future for all of us. I'd invite the naysayers to turn off the cable news, tear up the talking points, and take a look at America at its best.

I see America at its best when I pay a house call to my friend, Cory McCray, in the remarkable, resilient city of Baltimore. Cory's here with me today. He's a first-term delegate in the Maryland State House. In his short time in office, he's already made some big moves -- sponsoring a bill to restore voting rights to some 40,000 people coming out of prison in Maryland, enacted over the Governor's veto.

But Cory's story could've gone a different way. You all know the narrative of the city kid, the young man of color: he grew up in a tough neighborhood, made some bad choices, and got involved in the juvenile justice system. He spent his 18th birthday in a Baltimore jail cell.

When he got out, his mother presented him with a list of apprenticeship opportunities that she found through the state labor department, and she made him pick one. He asked his mother, why do you still believe in me? She replied, "I'm going to believe in you until you believe in yourself."

Cory chose a five-year apprenticeship program through the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and graduated with flying colors. Reflecting on that opportunity, Cory said, "It was a vehicle for me to achieve my dreams. It literally saved my life."

But it didn't just save his own life. It led him down a path that has affected thousands of lives in his community and across Maryland, and for that we should all be grateful.

My house calls to Cory, and so many others, show me that America is at its best when it is a place where --

Where we recognize that everybody is gifted and talented;

Where we invest in our people and their potential;

Where a middle-class life is within reach of everyone willing to work for it; and

Where business who embrace shared prosperity succeed and thrive; and

Where zip code never determines destiny.

But other house calls show me an America that can do better, and must do better. I met some young people in Cory's hometown of Baltimore last year after the tragic unrest. They've got game, but they don't have a rolodex. A young man told me he wanted to be more challenged academically, but his school didn't offer any Advanced Placement classes. A young woman told me that she's sometimes late for school… because the gunshots in her neighborhood during the night made it hard to sleep.

Stories like theirs keep me up at night. But the opportunity to help them gets me out of bed in the morning. Everything I see in these house calls -- an America at its best, an America that can do better -- inspires me.

Over the last seven years, the Obama Administration has used every tool in our toolkit to create more stories like Cory's. And we're acutely aware that government can't do it alone, so we've forged remarkable partnerships with the business community and others to ensure that prosperity is broadly shared.

Today, I want to tell you what my "house calls" have shown me about how we build the best America, and how we sustain that progress after we leave office in 212 days.

The Plural of Anecdote is Data

But before we get to talking about the best America, it's critical to understand that America is doing better than we were back in 2009.

All those people who say optimism is uncool also tend to deny some of the facts.

Despite what the Eeyore Caucus wants you to believe, we've come a long way since the depths of the economic crisis. Thanks to the grit and determination of the American people -- combined with leadership from the private sector and sound policy decisions by the Obama Administration -- we are back on our feet as a nation.

In the three months before the President's inauguration, the nation hemorrhaged roughly 2.3 million jobs. The auto industry was on life support and some said, pull the plug. The unemployment rate was climbing toward 10 percent. Weekly first-time claims for unemployment were over 600,000.

Today, the unemployment rate is below 5 percent. We're in the middle of the longest streak of private-sector job growth on record -- 75 consecutive months to the tune of 14.5 million jobs. Initial claims for unemployment benefits have remained under 300,000 -- less than half of early 2009 levels -- for 67 consecutive weeks, a sustained low that we haven't experienced since December 1973.

According to the latest data, job openings are as high as they have ever been since we started keeping track of the data -- 5.8 million as of the end of April.

The auto industry is back and stronger than ever. The auto industry has added nearly 670,000 jobs since mid-2009, and auto sales reached an all-time high last year. Our automotive exports were up 85 percent over 2009 levels at the end of last year.

Yet despite the resoundingly good news, some politicians have found it expedient to tell you that we're actually worse off than we were when President Obama took office.

You might hear that the unemployment rate is more like 40 percent. That might be true if we counted your 98-year-old grandmother, or the 11.9 million Americans over 80 years old; your high school freshman, or the 20.7 million Americans ages 10-14. You might hear that other countries are choosing to invest elsewhere. You might hear that putting a Republican in the White House is the only way to create jobs.

Well, frankly, facts matter. And the facts prove the Eeyore Caucus wrong every time.

In the first five years of the recovery, the US put nearly twice as many people back to work as the UK, Germany, France, and Japan combined.

The Affordable Care Act turned out not to be a job-killer. Since March 2010, we have added 1.8 million jobs in health care, while transforming and saving even more lives. After five years of the Affordable Care Act, more than 16 million Americans have gained coverage. The nation's uninsured rate is the lowest ever recorded.

America remains a magnet for investors. Study after study, whether it's from A.T. Kearney or the Boston Consulting Group, shows that a majority of business leaders say America is the best place in the world to invest.

And to the claim that job creation under President Obama has been anemic, let's do the math. If you go all the way back to 1981 and add up all of the private sector jobs that have been added under Republican presidents and Democratic presidents, it isn't even close. Under the leadership of President Clinton and President Obama, American businesses added a net of 31.3 million jobs, compared to just 15.8 million under Presidents Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II. That's two Democrats who helped to create nearly twice as many jobs as three Republicans.

And these are good jobs, too -- exactly what we would expect in a solid, sustained recovery. In the last few years especially, we have seen strong growth in middle- and high-wage jobs.

My house calls affirm the good news. We still have the greatest and most resilient workforce in the world. We have remarkably innovative business leaders. We have all the tools we need to succeed and prosper.

America is at its Best When…

I truly believe that America is at its best when we offer a hand to working people who have gotten knocked down. In Connecticut, I met a woman named Katherine Hackett who did everything right -- worked hard in the health care industry, raised two sons who went on to serve in the armed services. Through no fault of her own, she got a pink slip and found herself out of work for more than a year. She wore a winter coat around the house because she couldn't afford to turn the thermostat above 58 degrees. She told me that she felt a "poverty of spirit".

That is, until her spirits were lifted by the assistance she got from the workforce system, which landed her a job that has her back on her feet. Thanks to her grit and determination, and a little help from Department of Labor investments, she is thriving in a new job and has gotten promoted.

America is at its best when workers get a chance to share in the prosperity they help to create. In a town called New Berlin, New York, you can visit a Chobani yogurt factory. Chobani's CEO Hamdi Ulukaya grew up in a small village in Turkey and came to America to study English and take a few business courses. In 2005, with almost no experience in business, he took a big risk. He purchased a yogurt factory that was being closed by Kraft Foods. Over the next few years, he and a loyal group of employees grew Chobani into the top-selling yogurt brand in the United States.

Earlier this year, Hamdi announced that Chobani's 2000 workers would receive shares worth up to 10 percent of the company when it goes public or is sold. That's not pocket change -- Chobani is believed to be worth billions of dollars. Reflecting on his decision, Hamdi said "I've built something I never thought would be a success. I cannot think of Chobani being built without all of these people."

Hamdi isn't the only adherent to this stakeholder model. Everywhere I go, I meet business leaders who think long-term and reject the false choice that you can either take care of your worker or your shareholder. They understand that shareholders are best served when all stakeholders are well-served.

It's no accident that Glassdoor's Best Places to Work outperform the overall market year after year. According to the most recent reports, the companies on that list beat the return on the S&P 500 by as much as 122 percent between 2009 and 2014. The high road is indeed the smart road.

America is at its best when we look ahead instead of fighting yesterday's battles, understanding that change is a constant in America. I saw it in Eastern Kentucky, where the loss of coal jobs continues to create hardship for so many families. But there's a fledgling high-tech industry starting to emerge -- a "Silicon Holler." And there's a company called BitSource, which is training former miners to write code and thrive in these software jobs.

One guy I met there had gotten a call the week before from the mine where he once worked. They offered him his old job back. He said thanks but no thanks, because he's got a promising future and career pathway at BitSource. They're defying conventional wisdom and going from coal to code.

America is at its best when everyone gets a second chance. Cory McCray's story shows us that the right resources at the right time can transform a life and a community. That's why the Administration has invested in innovative programs to help people getting out of the criminal justice system. I made a "house call" to Montgomery County Correctional Facility in Pennsylvania. They have a "behind the fence" program for inmates to get the skills they need to get a good job upon release. I met a young man there named Scott Farina, who took advantage of the program and got a great job at A&V Mechanical when he got out. He's back on a path to success and self-sufficiency.

There is a remarkable bipartisan consensus emerging around easing former inmates' re-entry to the workforce. You might not have heard about it, because it's not flashy. But when you've brought together Van Jones, the Koch Brothers, and Newt Gingrich, you know you're onto something. Criminal justice reform is an issue that is at long last meeting its moment.

America is at its best when everyone has a voice at work. Innovators like Sarita Gupta are getting us there. Sarita leads two organizations that are all about helping workers speak up together for better wages and benefits.

Through her efforts at Jobs with Justice and Caring Across Generations, Sarita reminds us that the work of caregivers is truly the work that makes all other work possible. Everyone in that industry deserves a say in the decisions that affect them.

Those of us in the Obama Administration couldn't agree more. That's why President Obama extended minimum wage and overtime protections to nearly 2 million home health care workers, the overwhelming majority of whom are women doing God's work.

America is at its best when people get the tools they need to succeed at work and at home. I've seen it on the many house calls I've made to the Florida Avenue Grill here in Washington, both in my official capacity as Secretary of Labor and personal capacity as someone who loves great food. My friend Imar Hutchins is the owner; he's here with me today, too. Imar rejects the fiction that says food service has to be a low-wage, no-benefit industry.

He pays well above the minimum wage, offers paid sick leave to his employees, and hires people who have been involved in the criminal justice system. He doesn't do all this because he's a nice person, though I can assure you he is. Imar does it because it means a more loyal workforce and the ability to recruit top talent -- and that's good for business.

And finally, America is at its best when we fully enforce the laws that protect workers. I don't even have to make a house call when I need to be inspired by public servants -- we all work together at the Department of Labor. The dedicated career staff are truly the backbone of the organization. Every day, they help millions of people punch their ticket to the middle class. Since 2009, we have recovered nearly $1.6 billion in back wages for more than 1.7 million workers.

In just the last few months, the Labor Department completed historic rulemaking on issues at the heart of what it means to be middle class in America -- worker safety, wages, and retirement security.

The rule that limits workers' exposure to deadly silica dust has quite literally been decades in the making -- Labor Secretary Frances Perkins convened a national conference on it in 1938. Our public policy finally caught up to the science. We're protecting 2.3 million workers who are exposed to crystalline silica.

We also updated the nation's overtime rules so that more people get extra pay for extra work. This is about vindicating a basic principle: middle-class jobs should pay middle-class wages. Our rule more than doubled the salary threshold, helping 4.2 million people become newly-eligible for overtime. It will raise Americans' pay by an estimated $12 billion over the next 10 years.

And by the way, the total payroll increases associated with this rule are well under one-tenth of one percent of total payroll costs. This rule stands for the idea that low wages and no benefits are not the cost of doing business in 21st century America.

Our Conflict of Interest Rule established a fundamental principle of consumer protection in the American retirement marketplace -- your best interest should come before your adviser's financial interest. This rule is like a $20 billion tax cut for working families who are trying to save for retirement.

Where America Can Do Better

Traveling around the country and meeting these people -- and keeping a close eye on the economic indicators -- shows me America at its best. But I also see an America that can do better. Too many people are still struggling to get by, let alone get ahead.

For all the Hamdi Ulukayas who understand that prosperity must be broadly shared, there are CEOs who are trapped in what one business leader calls a "quarter-by-quarter results vortex." They refuse to make investments in the long-term health of their company because it wouldn't show up on the balance sheet right away.

Another CEO once told me about a renegade shareholder who wasn't interested in thinking long-term or doing well by doing good. He told this CEO: "I'd rather be rich than right."

For all the Sarita Guptas and Chris Owenses from the National Employment Law Program fighting for people to have a voice at work, there are too many seeking to quash it. In 2014, a prominent conservative was caught on tape boasting that he wakes up every day trying to figure out how to screw with unions. When you screw with unions, you screw with the middle class and with the livelihoods of millions of working people across the nation.

For all the leaders like Imar Hutchins providing paid leave -- Microsoft, Nestlé, and Spotify among them -- there are too many people out there faced with an untenable choice between the job they need and the family they love.

You shouldn't have to win the boss lottery or the geographic lottery to get access to good wages and paid leave.

I met a school bus driver in Connecticut named Corinne. During her last pregnancy, she had to take bed rest and then had a C-section, forcing her to take several weeks of unpaid leave that really squeezed the family budget. If that wasn't hard enough on her family, her husband was in a car accident, making it more difficult for them to pay the bills. She can't afford child care and she doesn't have paid leave, so some days she had to take her newborn on the school bus with her.

I met a woman named Alicia in Detroit. She works full-time, barely making above the minimum wage. She's part of the Fight for 15 movement organizing for better wages and a voice at work. The night before I met her, Alicia and her kids slept in her car. They had just gotten evicted from a rat-infested apartment.

We can do better. We can do better by all of these people.

In the year 2016, it is unconscionable that we're still having these debates. We must move forward; but, regrettably, we have not had a dance partner in the U.S. Congress. That's why the Obama Administration has used every tool in our toolkit to make change.

Nation at a Crossroads

I believe that the question before us now is whether we sustain and scale the progress we've made during the Obama Administration, or whether we turn back the clock.

This isn't the first time our nation has stood at a crossroads. We've seen this movie before, folks. The Know Nothing Party in the mid-19th century ran on a platform of nativist fear and ignorance. They captured more than a few state houses and city halls. In the 1880s, Congress actually passed a law called "the Chinese Exclusion Act." A few decades later, the Senate was gripped by a communist witch-hunt.

But every time, we've appealed to our better angels of inclusion, opportunity, and optimism; and we've returned to first principles. My friend Walter Isaacson tells a story about Albert Einstein, who came to the U.S. from Germany the year Hitler took power. During the McCarthy era, Einstein wrote a letter to his son, very worried about the direction of the nation. He said that he's seen it happen before; McCarthy's brand of hysteria wasn't new, and wasn't different from the Nazis and Communists.

But the United States was always able to course-correct. Einstein said to his son: "There's something amazing about America's democracy. It's got a gyroscope and just when you think it's going to go off the cliff, it rights itself."

But here's the thing about the gyroscope -- it doesn't kick into high gear by accident. The gyroscope re-centers us only when we come together.

It takes all of us, standing up as one, to keep us moving towards the best America. It takes the collective power of "we," the two-letter word that President Obama rightfully calls "the most important word in a democracy."

Over the last seven years, we materially improved lives for millions of working families. We bounced back from the worst economic crisis of our lifetimes. We extended overtime protections. We protected people's hard-earned retirement savings.

But we in the Administration didn't do it alone. We had partners in this room, partners across America. And we can't do it alone. I'm so appreciative of so many leaders in the business community that supported our Conflict of Interest rule. As Jack Bogle, founder of Vanguard, stated, when you put your customers' interest first, it's great for the customer and it's great for business.

I've met so many business leaders who understand the importance of the stakeholder model of governance -- people like Kip Tindell, CEO of The Container Store, is one of the leaders in the "conscious capitalism" movement.

Going forward, we need leaders like Kip and Imar and so many others to be the rule and not the exception. We have to scale the progress that I see around the country and the facts overwhelmingly confirm. That's part of why I spend a lot of time going to law school and business schools, talking to tomorrow's leaders about the fact that we can do better as a nation. You don't have an obligation to genuflect at the altar of quarterly earnings.

The gyroscope runs on that brand of leadership. It also takes innovation, forethought, and fearlessness.

Leadership means thinking long-term. It means rejecting false choices. It means understanding that idealism and pragmatism are not mutually exclusive. I've seen that done by my former boss, Senator Kennedy. I see that work done by my current boss, President Obama, on so many issues.

Innovation means moving forward without leaving anyone behind. Innovation is America's middle name, and the key to long-term success has always been inclusive innovation that benefits everyone.

Innovation is people like Dan Teran, who founded a remarkable startup, Managed by Q. It's the quintessential 21st-century startup, an on-demand app for office management. Dan insisted that all of his employees be W-2s, have access to training opportunities, and get stock options. He understands that culture matters in every workplace, and he has built that culture of inclusion into a very successful business model.

Forethought means seeing around corners. It means playing chess instead of checkers. It means not allowing the challenges of today to blind your ability to envision a better tomorrow.

I saw that forethought when I visited Ford. They were in an existential crisis in 2007. But coming together, Ford and the UAW were able work towards a vision of shared prosperity after a little shared sacrifice. I had the privilege of spending some time with the CWA, the IBEW, and the folks at Verizon. They understand that they are stronger together. It was a tough 13 days, but we got through it. Collective bargaining can sometimes be a little messy. But I believe, to my core, that collective bargaining is one of the single most important forces that brought us middle-class prosperity.

We need to keep being fearless. Fearlessness is Craig Boyan, CEO of a $23 billion Texas-based grocery chain called H-E-B. He's competing in a low-margin industry. Craig was one of the biggest supporters of our overtime rule, because his workers are at the center of his business model. He believes that the low road is a dangerous road, and we need to take the high road.

All these remarkable people -- all of these examples of America at its best -- fuel my chronic optimism. But I'm also chronically impatient, because of the people I meet who are running out of time.

I am confident that, as we approach this crossroads and choose our path, that we will summon our leadership, innovation, forethought, and fearlessness. We will move forward to scale and sustain our progress.

I have 212 days until the weekend. I'm going to remain chronically optimistic as we work towards the best America, where prosperity is broadly shared.

Thank you once again.

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