President Barack Obama asserted in a recent interview that Republicans in Congress have policies that would "accelerate" trends that cause income inequality.
In an interview that aired on Sunday, ABC News host George Stephanopolous pointed out to the president that 95 percent of the income gains since 2009 had gone to the top 1 percent of Americans.
"Maybe a president just can't stop this accelerating inequality," Stephanopolous observed.
"No, I think the president can stop it," Obama replied. "The problem is that there continues to be a major debate here in Washington. And that is, how do we respond to these underlying trends?"
The president noted that globalization and technology were eliminating American jobs. And he argued that was why it was important to have policies to educate young people for higher-skilled jobs, provide work through rebuilding infrastructure and to give companies tax breaks for research and development.
"All those things can make the situation better, it doesn't solve the problem entirely, but it pushes against these trends," Obama continued. "And the problem that we've got right now is you've got a portion of Congress whose policies don't just want to leave things alone, they actually want to accelerate these trends."
"There's no serious economist out there that would suggest that if you took the Republican agenda of slashing education further, slashing Medicare further, slashing research and development further, slashing investments in infrastructure further, that that would reverse some of these trends."
