President Obama hosts live Twitter Town Hall
Today, President Obama hosted the first ever live White House Twitter town hall. People from around the globe could sign up at #AskObama with questions on the economy, jobs, and education.
President Obama replied, "One would have been to explain to the American people that it was going to take a while for us to get out of this. I think even I did not realize the magnitude, because most economists didn’t realize the magnitude, of the recession until fairly far into it, maybe two or three months into my presidency where we started realizing that we had lost 4 million jobs before I was even sworn in. And so I think people may not have been prepared for how long this was going to take and why we were going to have to make some very difficult decisions and choices. And I take responsibility for that, because setting people’s expectations is part of how you end up being able to respond well".
The president said there that in the area of housing, the second area where he would have done things differently, he would have ensured that homeowners could keep their homes. During the recession, several thousand families lost their homes, when they lost their jobs.
"We’ve had to revamp our housing program several times to try to help people stay in their homes and try to start lifting home values up. But of all the things we’ve done, that’s probably been the area that’s been most stubborn to us trying to solve the problem".
The president's Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan was implemented in 2009 to help homeowners retain their homes.
A twit from an unlikely, but not surprising, source came from House Majority Speaker, John Boehner (the second tweet that caught our attention) who asked the president, "After embarking on a record spending binge that left us deeper in debt, where are the jobs?”
The president didn't make reference to the 'record spending binge', but did remark that "two million jobs were created over the last 15 months in the private sector".
On how jobs could be created, the president said, "There are a couple of things that we can continue to do. I actually worked with Speaker Boehner to pass a payroll tax cut in December that put an extra $1,000 in the pockets of almost every single American. That means they’re spending money. That means that businesses have customers. And that has helped improve overall growth".
The president followed up by saying, "We have provided at least 16 tax cuts to small businesses who have needed a lot of help and have been struggling, including, for example, saying zero capital gains taxes on startups, because our attitude is we want to encourage new companies, young entrepreneurs, to get out there, start their business, without feeling like if they’re successful in the first couple of years that somehow they have to pay taxes, as opposed to putting that money back into their business.
The president added that Boehner "needed to work on his typing skills", after the Speaker complained that it was Twitter's fault that he could only type 140 characters.
The president became the first president to tweet live. His tweet?
"In order to reduce the deficit, what costs would you cut and what investments would you keep?"
That could be a question that will be posed tomorrow as both parties meet at the White House for talks on debt reduction, taxes, and other items that the divided parties must make amends at before the August 2nd deadline, circumventing a government shutdown.
The Republicans want no tax increases (when has this ever happened in presidential history?), while the president wants to ensure that the wealthiest of Americans pay their share.
"I think that for us to say that millionaires and billionaires can go back to the tax rate that existed when Bill Clinton was President, that doesn’t affect middle-class families who are having a tough time and haven’t seen their incomes go up. It does mean that those who are in the top 1-2 percent, who have seen their incomes go up much more quickly than anybody else, pays a little bit more in order to make sure that we can make the basic investments that grow this country. That’s not an unreasonable position to take. And the vast majority of Americans agree with me on that".
The president said he himself would gladly accept a tax increase if it meant saving Head Start programs for young children, and making sure senior citizens had medical care.
"I don’t want a $200,000 tax break if it means that some senior is going to have to pay $6,000 more for their Medicare that they don’t have, or a bunch of kids are going to be kicked off of Head Start and aren’t going to get the basics that they need in order to succeed in our society. I don’t think that’s good for me. I don’t think it’s good for the country".
We agree, Mr. President. We agree.
---
Background on the President’s Twitter Town Hall
The Twitter Town Hall was moderated by Jack Dorsey, Twitter co-founder and Executive Chairman. The audience consisted of 140 guests, including over 30 White House “Tweetup” participants from across the country that follow @whitehouse on Twitter. Twitter users had been posting questions since last Thursday, and will continue to post questions throughout the Town Hall using the hashtag #AskObama. As of noon today, there were more than 60,000 tweets about the event using the hashtag #AskObama.
Twitter has partnered with Mass Relevance to curate, visualize and integrate conversations for the event. Mass Relevance data helps make the questions regionally and topically diverse and provides insight into the most popular topic areas. Algorithms behind Twitter search will identify the Tweets that are most engaged via Retweets, Favorites and Replies.
A team of seasoned Twitter users will also help flag questions from their communities through retweets.
• Iowa - @willwilkinson. Blogs about American politics for The Economist.
• Minnesota - @Kara_McGuire. Personal finance columnist at the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
• Illinois - @RamanChadha. Professor at DePaul University’s Coleman Entrepreneurship Center.
• North Carolina - @steven_norton. Former @dailytarheel editor-in-chief. He will be a senior at UNC and this summer is a business intern at @theobserver.
• Louisiana - @KimQuillenTP. Business Editor at The Times-Picayune.
• California - @AssignmentDesk1. Online content producer for North County Times in California.
• New Hampshire - @DrewHampshire. Editorial page editor at the NH Union Leader.
• At Large - @Modeledbehavior. Karl Smith is an assistant professor of econ at UNC and an economics blogger.
A team from Twitter will use the inputs above to select questions during the event. Additionally, Twitter has selected questions in the hours prior to the event from the pool of questions posed since last Thursday.
Background on Graphics on Monitors
There will be two different visualization displays. One will show the map of the United States with dots placed and appearing across the country. The dots represent Tweets that have been identified as questions on the economy in several categories, including jobs, education, budget and housing and taxes. The other visualization will track the relative percentage of questions on different jobs, education, budget and housing and taxes. Both visualizations will be updated in real-time during the event.
The Twitter Town Hall event was streamed live at whitehouse.gov/live.
Today, President Obama hosted the first ever live White House Twitter town hall. People from around the globe could sign up at #AskObama with questions on the economy, jobs, and education.
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| Top topics discussed in the White House Twitter Town Hall. Photo/CD Brown. |
There were two that caught the attention of both the president and us here at Politics. On Point.
One question came in from a 'Will Smith' (no, not that one) that asked the president (1) what mistakes had he made handling the recession, and (2) what would he have done differently?President Obama replied, "One would have been to explain to the American people that it was going to take a while for us to get out of this. I think even I did not realize the magnitude, because most economists didn’t realize the magnitude, of the recession until fairly far into it, maybe two or three months into my presidency where we started realizing that we had lost 4 million jobs before I was even sworn in. And so I think people may not have been prepared for how long this was going to take and why we were going to have to make some very difficult decisions and choices. And I take responsibility for that, because setting people’s expectations is part of how you end up being able to respond well".
The president said there that in the area of housing, the second area where he would have done things differently, he would have ensured that homeowners could keep their homes. During the recession, several thousand families lost their homes, when they lost their jobs.
"We’ve had to revamp our housing program several times to try to help people stay in their homes and try to start lifting home values up. But of all the things we’ve done, that’s probably been the area that’s been most stubborn to us trying to solve the problem".
The president's Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan was implemented in 2009 to help homeowners retain their homes.
A twit from an unlikely, but not surprising, source came from House Majority Speaker, John Boehner (the second tweet that caught our attention) who asked the president, "After embarking on a record spending binge that left us deeper in debt, where are the jobs?”
The president didn't make reference to the 'record spending binge', but did remark that "two million jobs were created over the last 15 months in the private sector".
On how jobs could be created, the president said, "There are a couple of things that we can continue to do. I actually worked with Speaker Boehner to pass a payroll tax cut in December that put an extra $1,000 in the pockets of almost every single American. That means they’re spending money. That means that businesses have customers. And that has helped improve overall growth".
The president followed up by saying, "We have provided at least 16 tax cuts to small businesses who have needed a lot of help and have been struggling, including, for example, saying zero capital gains taxes on startups, because our attitude is we want to encourage new companies, young entrepreneurs, to get out there, start their business, without feeling like if they’re successful in the first couple of years that somehow they have to pay taxes, as opposed to putting that money back into their business.
 |
| President Obama reading an incoming tweet during the White House Twitter Town Hall. Photo/CD Brown. |
The president became the first president to tweet live. His tweet?
"In order to reduce the deficit, what costs would you cut and what investments would you keep?"
That could be a question that will be posed tomorrow as both parties meet at the White House for talks on debt reduction, taxes, and other items that the divided parties must make amends at before the August 2nd deadline, circumventing a government shutdown.
The Republicans want no tax increases (when has this ever happened in presidential history?), while the president wants to ensure that the wealthiest of Americans pay their share.
"I think that for us to say that millionaires and billionaires can go back to the tax rate that existed when Bill Clinton was President, that doesn’t affect middle-class families who are having a tough time and haven’t seen their incomes go up. It does mean that those who are in the top 1-2 percent, who have seen their incomes go up much more quickly than anybody else, pays a little bit more in order to make sure that we can make the basic investments that grow this country. That’s not an unreasonable position to take. And the vast majority of Americans agree with me on that".
The president said he himself would gladly accept a tax increase if it meant saving Head Start programs for young children, and making sure senior citizens had medical care.
"I don’t want a $200,000 tax break if it means that some senior is going to have to pay $6,000 more for their Medicare that they don’t have, or a bunch of kids are going to be kicked off of Head Start and aren’t going to get the basics that they need in order to succeed in our society. I don’t think that’s good for me. I don’t think it’s good for the country".
We agree, Mr. President. We agree.
---
Background on the President’s Twitter Town Hall
The Twitter Town Hall was moderated by Jack Dorsey, Twitter co-founder and Executive Chairman. The audience consisted of 140 guests, including over 30 White House “Tweetup” participants from across the country that follow @whitehouse on Twitter. Twitter users had been posting questions since last Thursday, and will continue to post questions throughout the Town Hall using the hashtag #AskObama. As of noon today, there were more than 60,000 tweets about the event using the hashtag #AskObama.
Twitter has partnered with Mass Relevance to curate, visualize and integrate conversations for the event. Mass Relevance data helps make the questions regionally and topically diverse and provides insight into the most popular topic areas. Algorithms behind Twitter search will identify the Tweets that are most engaged via Retweets, Favorites and Replies.
A team of seasoned Twitter users will also help flag questions from their communities through retweets.
• Iowa - @willwilkinson. Blogs about American politics for The Economist.
• Minnesota - @Kara_McGuire. Personal finance columnist at the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
• Illinois - @RamanChadha. Professor at DePaul University’s Coleman Entrepreneurship Center.
• North Carolina - @steven_norton. Former @dailytarheel editor-in-chief. He will be a senior at UNC and this summer is a business intern at @theobserver.
• Louisiana - @KimQuillenTP. Business Editor at The Times-Picayune.
• California - @AssignmentDesk1. Online content producer for North County Times in California.
• New Hampshire - @DrewHampshire. Editorial page editor at the NH Union Leader.
• At Large - @Modeledbehavior. Karl Smith is an assistant professor of econ at UNC and an economics blogger.
A team from Twitter will use the inputs above to select questions during the event. Additionally, Twitter has selected questions in the hours prior to the event from the pool of questions posed since last Thursday.
Background on Graphics on Monitors
There will be two different visualization displays. One will show the map of the United States with dots placed and appearing across the country. The dots represent Tweets that have been identified as questions on the economy in several categories, including jobs, education, budget and housing and taxes. The other visualization will track the relative percentage of questions on different jobs, education, budget and housing and taxes. Both visualizations will be updated in real-time during the event.
The Twitter Town Hall event was streamed live at whitehouse.gov/live.
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