Remarks of President Barack Obama The Weekly Address Honolulu, Hawaii January 4, 2013 Hi, everybody. Over the past year, as I traveled across the country campaigning for this office, I told you that if I was fortunate enough to be re-elected, I’d work to change a tax code that too often benefited the wealthy at the expense of the middle class. This week, we did that. For the first time in two decades, we raised taxes on the wealthiest 2% of Americans in a bipartisan way, while preventing a middle-class tax hike that could have thrown our economy back into recession. Under this law, more than 98% of Americans and 97% of small business will not see their income taxes go up one dime. We also made sure that millions of families will continue to receive tax credits to help raise their children and send them to college. Companies will continue to receive tax credits for the research they do, the investments they make, and the clean energy jobs they create. And two million Americans who are out of work will continue to receive unemployment benefits so long as they are actively looking for a job. But all this was just one more step in the broader effort to grow our economy and shrink our deficits. We still need to do more to put Americans back to work while also putting this country on a path to pay down its debt. And our economy can’t afford more protracted showdowns or manufactured crises along the way. Because even as our businesses created 2 million new jobs last year …