美国总统奥巴马每周电台演讲2015.03.29

Hi, everybody.  Five years ago, after the worst financial crisis in decades, we passed historic Wall Street reform to end the era of bailouts and too big to fail.
As part that reform, we created an independent Consumer Financial Protection Bureau with one mission: to protect American consumers from some of the worst practices of the financial industry.
They’ve already put $5 billion back in the pockets of more than 15 million families.  And this week, they took an important first step towards cracking down on some of the most abusive practices involving payday loans.
大家好。五年前，经历了几十年来最严峻的金融危机后，我们通过了历史性的华尔街改革以结束政府救助和金融机构大到不能倒闭的时代。
作为改革的一部分，我们创造了一个独立的只有一个使命的消费者金融保护局：保护美国的消费者们不受金融行业的最恶劣的行径的损害。
他们已经把50亿美元放回了1千5百万家庭的钱包。本周，他们在粉碎一些涉及发薪日贷款的最严重的滥用恶行的道路上迈出了重要的第一步。

Millions of Americans take out these loans every year.  In Alabama, where I visited this week, there are four times as many payday lending stores as there are McDonald’s.  But while payday loans might seem like easy money, folks often end up trapped in a cycle of debt.  If you take out a $500 loan, it’s easy to wind up paying more than $1,000 in interest and fees.
The step the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced this week is designed to change that.  The idea is pretty common sense: if you’re a payday lender preparing to give a loan, you should make sure that the borrower can afford to pay it back first.
As Americans, we believe there’s nothing wrong with making a profit.  But there is something wrong with making that profit by trapping hard-working men and women in a vicious cycle of debt. 
成千上万的美国人每年都借这类贷款。在我本周访问过的阿拉巴马州，发薪日贷款机构是麦当劳连锁店数量的四倍。但是尽管发薪日贷款看上去很容易，贷了款的人们通常以陷入债务圈结束。如果你借了500美元贷款，在还款时很容易就连同利息和费用翻到1000美元。
本周消费者金融保护局宣布的步骤就是为了改变这些草拟的。其理念简直就是常识：如果你是发薪日贷款的放贷人打算放贷，你就要首先确保借贷人能还得起。
作为美国人，我们认为谋利无可厚非。但是以让勤奋工作的男男女女陷入债务恶性循环来谋利就大错特错了。

Protecting working Americans’ paychecks shouldn’t be a partisan issue.  But the budget Republicans unveiled last week would make it harder, not easier, to crack down on financial fraud and abuse.  And this week, when Republicans rolled out their next economic idea, it had nothing to do with the middle class.  It was a new, more-than-$250 billion tax cut for the top one-tenth of the top one percent of Americans.  That would mean handing out an average tax cut of $4 million a year to just 4,000 Americans per year, and leaving the rest of the country to pay for it.
I don’t think our top economic priority should be helping a tiny number of Americans who are already doing extraordinarily well, and asking everybody else to foot the bill.  I think our top priority should be helping everybody who works hard get ahead.  This country does best when everyone gets their fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.
That’s what middle-class economics is all about, and as long as I’m your President, that’s what I’ll keep on fighting to do.
Thanks, and have a great weekend.
看好工薪美国人的钱包不应该是一个党派争端。但是共和党人上周推出的预算使粉碎金融欺诈和滥用更加艰难了，而不是更加简单了。本周，当共和党人宣布他们的下一个经济计划时，通篇对中产阶级几乎只字未提。它是一个新的为美国的最富裕的百分之一人群中的十分之一减免超过2500亿美元税务的法案。这将意味着给仅仅4000个美国人平均每年4百万美元的税务减免，而让全国其他人为他们买单。
我认为我们的第一经济要务不是帮助极少数已经富得流油的美国人，而要求其他人买单。我认为我们的第一经济要务是帮助每个努力工作的人致富。每个人得到公平的机会、每个人尽其公平的义务并且每个人都在同一套规则下竞争，美国就兴旺。
这就是中产阶级经济学的全部内涵，只要我还是你们的总统，这就是我要继续为之奋斗的目标。
谢谢，周末快乐。