Friday at his 2015 year-end news conference, President Barack Obama thanked Congress for passing the $1.1 trillion year-end omnibus spending bill that he claimed would put people back to work and would benefit the country as a whole.
Obama said, “I do want to thank Congress for ending the year on a high note. I got to sign an education bill that is going to fix some of the challenges we had with no child left behind and promises to invest more in high quality early childhood education. We signed a transportation bill that, although not as are — as robust as I think we need, still allows states and will call governments to plan and actually get moving, putting people back to work, rebuilding roads and bridges. We got Ex-Im bank back to work supporting American exports. And today they passed a bipartisan budget deal. Not wild about everything in it. I’m sure that’s true for everybody. But it is a budget that as I insisted invests in our military and our middle class without ideological provisions that would have weakened Wall Street reform or rules on big polluters. It’s part of an agreement that will permanently extend tax credits to 24 million working families. It includes some long-sought wins like strengthening America’s leadership at the IMF and because it eliminates the possibility of a shutdown for the first time — for the first nine months of next year, Congress and I have a long runway to get some important things to done on behalf of the American people.”
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