Weekly Address: Protecting Working Americans’ Paychecks 每周电视讲话：保住工薪阶层的工资

WASHINGTON, DC — In this week’s address, the President highlighted the progress made protecting American consumers since he signed Wall Street Reform into law five years ago, including an important new step taken by the independent Consumer Financial Protection Bureau earlier this week toward preventing abuses in payday lending. The President emphasized his commitment to fighting to advance middle-class economics and ensure everybody who works hard can get ahead, while opposing attempts by Republicans both to weaken the CFPB and give large tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans at the expense of the middle class. 华盛顿:在本周的讲话中,奥巴马总统强调了自从五年前他签署《华尔街改革法》以来政府在保护消费者权益方面取得的成绩，包括本周初消费者金融保护局新实施防止金融机构滥用发薪日贷款的措施。总统再次强调了他的承诺，要继续推进提升中产阶级的经济政策，确保每一位辛勤付出的人都能取得成功，同时反对共和党削弱消费者金融保护局职能，以及以损害中产阶级利益为代价向最富裕的少数美国人提供大幅税收优惠的意图。

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. 大家好！五年前，在经历几十年来最为严重的金融危机之后，我们破天荒地通过了《华尔街改革法》，结束了对那些太大而不能倒下的公司提供援助的时代。

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. 作为该改革法的一部分，我们成立了独立的消费者金融保护局，该局的使命只有一个：保护美国的消费者免受金融行业某些严重恶行的侵害。

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. 几年来，该局帮助1500多万个家庭挽回了50多亿元的损失。本周，他们又采取了一项新的举措，打击包括发薪日贷款注在内的对部分金融工具的滥用。 (注：发薪日贷款：一种短期贷款，专门贷给依赖薪水活命的低薪人士，帮助他们弥补两个发薪日之间的现金短缺。)

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. 每年，有数百万美国人借贷此类贷款。在我本周到访的阿拉巴马州，这种发薪日贷款店的数量是麦当劳的四倍。尽管发薪日贷款看起来可以缓解现金压力，但人们通常会因此而陷入债务陷阱。如果你借出500块，最后很可能需要偿还1000多块的利息和各种费用。

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. 消费者金融保护局本周采取的措施就是要改变这一状况。该措施的想法很简单：如果你是发薪日放贷人，准备发放一笔贷款，你首先应该确认这个借款人有能力偿还这笔贷款。

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. 作为美国人，我们都坚信谋取利润是天经地义的事情。但是采用让辛勤劳动的人们陷入恶性的债务循环的方式攫取利润就不对了。

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. 保护工薪人士的工资不应该成为一个党派争论的话题。但共和党上周提出的预算方案会使打击金融欺诈和剥削变得更加困难，而不是更容易。本周，共和党推出的另一个经济发展方案，跟中产阶级一毛钱关系也没有。而是一项新的，为百分之一的富有的美国人中的十分之一的人提供2500亿美元的税收减免。这意味着平均每年要向4000个美国人提供4百万的税收减免，让剩下的所有人为此买单。

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. 我从不认为我们最重要的头等经济政策应该是帮助极少部分已经极为富有的美国人，而让剩下的每个人为此买单。我认为我们的头等大事应该是帮助每一位辛勤付出的人取得进步，获得成功。只有当每个人都得到公平的机会，承担共同的责任，遵守共同的规则的时候，这个国家才能发展的更好。

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. 这才是有利于中产阶级的经济政策需要做的，只要我还是总统，我就将为此而不懈奋斗。

Thanks, and have a great weekend. 谢谢大家，祝周末愉快！