President Barack Obama addressed a crowd of thousands at the KU on Thursday, Jan. 22.Over 7,000 people crowded into the Anschutz Sports Pavilion for the speech, which began at 11:30 a.m.
Before the speech, Alyssa Cole, a senior at the college, told her story. As a mother of three, she expressed the struggles of trying to find good and affordable child care.
“There were times where I spend my entire paycheck paying for one week of daycare,” Cole said. “In the United States, we should have the opportunity to pursue a career and an education while at the same time building quality lives for ourselves and for our children.”
Obama spent much of his speech addressing his plan of making child care more available. This plan included a tax cut of up to $3,000 per child annually to help pay for child care.
“[Child care is] the best investment we can make. It’s the right thing to do. We can do more to help families make end meet,” said Obama.
Additionally, Obama pushed for creating gender pay equality.
“Congress still needs to pass a law that makes sure a woman is paid the same as a man for doing the same work,” said Obama. “I mean, come on now, it’s 2015. This should be sort of a no-brainer.”
Obama spoke of his intention to raise the minimum wage amount.
“If there are members of Congress that really believe that they can work full-time and support a family on less than $15,000 a year, they should try it,” said Obama. “And if not, they should vote to give millions of hard-working people across America the raise they deserve.”
Obama then discussed his “deep roots” in Kansas, mentioning his family that lived in the state. He also talked about the college’s basketball team, and joked about he had failed to win Kansas in either of his elections.
“I’m a Kansas guy. That helped me in the caucus in 2008. It didn’t help me as much in the general election,” said Obama. “Coach Self won 10 straight, I lost two straight here.”
Obama ended the 30-minute speech by asking for more bipartisanship.
“We’re going to disagree on politics sometimes, but we don’t have to be so viciously divided as a people. We all know what God and grandma taught us to do. Whoever we are, Republican, Democrat, male, female, young, old, black, white, gay, straight; we all share a common vision for our future. We want a better country for your generation and for your kid’s generation,” said Obama. “I want that country to be one that shows the world I know is still to be true: that we are still not a collection of just red states and blue states, we are still the United States of America.”