WEEKLY ADDRESS:President Obama Presses the Case for Bold Action to Address the Economic Crisis

WHITEHOUSE.GOV ^ | March 7, 2009 | n/a

[Cindy]

Note: The following text is a quote:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/WEEKLY-ADDRESS-President-Obama-Presses-the-Case-for-Bold-Action-to-Address-the-Economic-Crisis/

THE BRIEFING ROOM

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary ______________________________________________________________________________ SATURDAY, March 7, 2009

WEEKLY ADDRESS: President Obama Presses the Case for Bold Action to Address the Economic Crisis

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama used his weekly address to detail his plans to fix our ailing economy, noting that reforming healthcare is necessary to ensure our long term fiscal health. While ending this crisis will not be quick or easy, the President’s plans will take the swift, bold, and responsible actions needed for the United States to emerge stronger and more prosperous than before. And that is why reforming healthcare, jumpstarting job creation, restoring lending, relieving responsible homeowners, and making hard choices are all so critically important right now.

The full audio of the address is HERE. The video can be viewed online at www.whitehouse.gov.

Remarks of President Barack Obama Weekly Address Saturday, March 7, 2009 Washington, DC

Yesterday, we learned that the economy lost another 651,000 jobs in the month of February, which brings the total number of jobs lost in this recession to 4.4 million. The unemployment rate has now surpassed 8 percent, the highest rate in a quarter century.

These aren't just statistics, but hardships experienced personally by millions of Americans who no longer know how they'll pay their bills, or make their mortgage, or raise their families.

From the day I took office, I knew that solving this crisis would not be easy, nor would it happen overnight. And we will continue to face difficult days in the months ahead. But I also believe that we will get through this -- that if we act swiftly and boldly and responsibly, the United States of America will emerge stronger and more prosperous than it was before.

That's why my administration is committed to doing all that's necessary to address this crisis and lead us to a better day. That's why we're moving forward with an economic agenda that will jumpstart job creation, restart lending, relieve responsible homeowners, and address the long-term economic challenges of our time: the cost of health care, our dependence on oil, and the state of our schools.

To prevent foreclosures for as many as 4 million homeowners -- and lower interest rates and lift home values for millions more -- we are implementing a plan to allow lenders to work with borrowers to refinance or restructure their mortgages. On Wednesday, the Department of Treasury and Housing and Urban Development released the guidelines that lenders will use for lowering mortgage payments. This plan is now at work.

To restore the availability of affordable loans for families and businesses -- not just banks -- we are taking steps to restart the flow of credit and stabilize the financial markets. On Thursday, the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve launched the Consumer and Business Lending Initiative -- a plan that will generate up to a trillion dollars of new lending so that families can finance a car or college education -- and small businesses can raise the capital that will create jobs.

And we've already begun to implement the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act -- a plan that will save and create over 3.5 million jobs over the next two years -- jobs rebuilding our roads and bridges, constructing wind turbines and solar panels, expanding broadband and mass transit. And because of this plan, those who have lost their job in this recession will be able to receive extended unemployment benefits and continued health care coverage, while 95 percent of working Americans will receive a tax break beginning April 1st.

Of course, like every family going through hard times, our country must make tough choices. In order to pay for the things we need -- we cannot waste money on the things we don't.

My administration inherited a $1.3 trillion budget deficit, the largest in history. And we've inherited a budgeting process as irresponsible as it is unsustainable. For years, as Wall Street used accounting tricks to conceal costs and avoid responsibility, Washington did, too.

These kinds of irresponsible budgets -- and inexcusable practices -- are now in the past. For the first time in many years, my administration has produced a budget that represents an honest reckoning of where we are and where we need to go.

It's also a budget that begins to make the hard choices that we've avoided for far too long -- a strategy that cuts where we must and invests where we need. That's why it includes $2 trillion in deficit reduction, while making historic investments in America's future. That's why it reduces discretionary spending for non-defense programs as a share of the economy by more than 10 percent over the next decade -- to the lowest level since they began keeping these records nearly half a century ago. And that's why on Wednesday, I signed a presidential memorandum to end unnecessary no-bid contracts and dramatically reform the way contracts are awarded -- reforms that will save the American people up to $40 billion each year.

Finally, because we cannot bring our deficit down or grow our economy without tackling the skyrocketing cost of health care, I held a health care summit on Thursday to begin the long-overdue process of reform. Our ideas and opinions about how to achieve this reform will vary, but our goal must be the same: quality, affordable health care for every American that no longer overwhelms the budgets of families, businesses, and our government.

Yes, this is a moment of challenge for our country. But we've experienced great trials before. And with every test, each generation has found the capacity to not only endure, but to prosper -- to discover great opportunity in the midst of great crisis. That is what we can and must do today. And I am absolutely confident that is what we will do. I'm confident that at this defining moment, we will prove ourselves worthy of the sacrifice of those who came before us, and the promise of those who will come after.

##

[NativeNewYorker]

I just used this on another thread, but it makes sense here too.

[GOP Poet]

Man I could not make it past the first paragraph without saying. "THIS MAN IS AN IDIOT!!!"

I almost chocked last night on O'Reilly. Bill called Zero brilliant. HA! There is no brilliance in the stupidity of how he is going about destroying the fiscal condition of our country. He has one agenda and one agenda only: turn the U.S. into a strong mixture of communism and socialism and keep it that way. That is all he has shown up to do.

[GOP Poet]

I mean watching O’Reilly, I nearly chocked.

[Brilliant]

A $2 trillion annual deficit is bold enough for me, thank you.

[Brilliant]

Bold action...

Maybe that’s why gun sales are up?

[MichiganConservative]

Do his handlers actually believe this crap? Do his speechwriters? Are the speechwriters laughing out loud as they write this BS? Do they drink or take drugs to deal with the crap they have to generate?

[SweetCaroline]

*

[2harddrive]

O ne

B ig

A ss

M istake

A merica!

[TurtleUp]

Obama may be the best thing to happen to our country since Reagan.

The liberals and socialists have been moving our country in their direction gradually since the days of Bill Clinton and long before him, and we have been too busy with our own lives to bother as long as the damage was slow and affordable. Socialists and their sympathizers have been just short of a majority for many years, and even without Obama they would eventually have elected one of their own, or just continued moving us a step in that direction every two years with their influence in Congress and in the media.

It may be better to have a phenomenally stupid socialist now than a competent one in four years. It may be better to face this crisis now than to delay it until the economy is booming and can to some extent afford the massive waste and economic losses triggered by either a gradual or a sudden socialist transition.

Assuming that the United States can survive the economic and social disaster of four years under socialism, we may teach an entire generation more about economics than they ever wanted to learn. The economy until 2012 is Obama's. I, for one, will do everything I can within the law to make sure he fails, and I will pray that he gets all the credit and all the blame for his economic decisions - let's test socialism once and for all so we can reject that failed system and move back to valuing freedom over imposed equality of outcomes.

Four years of Obama may just be enough to bury socialism for a generation or longer (evil never goes away, but we can earn a break from its dangers).

[bethtopaz]

I work in Davis, CA and I just drove home a little bit ago.
Davis is home of the University of California, Davis and is a very liberal, tree-hugging, environmental wacko place. Everywhere you go you see Obama bumper stickers. All ages, but lots of university students voted for him.

You are right, TurtleUp, this will be the first real lesson in economics for many of them.

Definition of a Conservative: A liberal who got mugged by Obama, Pelosi and Reid, et al.

[Nateman]

...Presses the Case for Bold Action to Address the Economic Crisis. "

So Spending more in on 6 weeks than we have ever spent is not bold?(Click on picture for more fun at this moron's expense)

[scooby321]

PANIC is setting in

[silverleaf]

reforming healthcare has NOTHING to do with the economy

LIAR

let people make and keep their own money to buy health insurance

[MichiganConservative]

If the nannies in Congress decided to let people take care of themselves instead of paternalistically treating them like stupid children, they’d have to do find something to do with the other 300 or so days of the year when they weren’t doing Constitutionally mandated work of the federal government.

Power hungry sociopaths inhabit Congress.

[henkster]

People with brains realize that he’s either all talk and no do, or he’s lying while he deliberately destroys the economy. People without brains are still waiting for the free ham trees he promised during the campaign. Unfortunately, the referendum of November 4, 2008, determined that the number of Americans lacking brains is now in the majority. The failure of 0bama to deliver the ham trees isn’t going to give them the brains they lack.

[VRWC For Truth]

Blah, blah, teleprompter, blah ...

[Global2010]

Just watched a movie Street Kings.

Made me ponder Obama and the huge physical stress that is appearing in his face.

Also this non stop empty news of how he is working day and night on our economy.

Could this economic recovery much like the Go Green Al Gore Movement be just a rouse while the puppet Masters of Obama put into place the nefarious Marxist new America.

I think Obama is looking spent and tired because something very evil is going down and Obama did not even know the scope of things that will come.

Hah or maybe that Keauna Reeves movie Street Kings I just watched was really a good smoke and mirrors corrupt to the core of politicians murder/mystery that it got my mind spinning.

[uncommonsense]

"My administration inherited a $1.3 trillion budget deficit, the largest in history [so I'm going to jack it up so high and so fast that you will all be broke and dependent on me]. And we've inherited a budgeting process as irresponsible as it is unsustainable [so I'm going to shut down all opposition and steam roll this POS budget through congress]. For years, as Wall Street used accounting tricks to conceal costs and avoid responsibility, Washington did, too. These kinds of irresponsible budgets - and inexcusable practices - are now in the past. For the first time in many years, my administration has produced a budget that represents an honest reckoning of where we are and where we need to go [which is to say - insolvency, owned by China and Saudi Ariba, while we transfer funds to Hamas]. It's also a budget that begins to make the hard choices that we've avoided for far too long -- a strategy that cuts where we must and invests where we need [like $10 billion for a train for Harry Reid]. That's why it includes $2 trillion in deficit reduction [in the form of higher taxes on productive people and business], while making historic investments in America's future.

When you hear Obamunism talk about cost savings - he's really talking about the voodoo economics of raising taxes.

It's driving frikin' crazy every time I hear his crap about the deficit he inherited. Hey Obamunism - talk to Reid and Pelosi about pushing up the deficit, and while you're at it - talk to your union buds about how they're driving the competitiveness out of our products domestically and globally, while corporate taxes are the 2nd highest of industrialized nations so globals keep their profits off shore, and people give up fighting the government on so many fronts to try to produce / maintain jobs, and we won't control legal / illegal immigration so jobs go to lower cost, lower skilled workers further undercutting our competitiveness.

[behzinlea]

Characterizing Obama’s address as “bold” is the media’s cheap and cynical attempt to infuse credibility with a word where there is none in substance.

Just like Obama himself. Bold air going nowhere.

[calex59]

Every time this guy wants to pass a huge pork bill, it is stressed as the only thing that can save us from ultimate doom! Why haven’t the other bills, especially porkulus, solved the problem? There was a tremendous rush to pass the so called stimulus “package” but hardly any of the money has been spent and none of that will help the economy, and neither will the remainder of the money when it is spent. So why pour good money after bad? I can’t wait until 2010 and maybe we can put some conservatives in the legislature. Heaven help us if we don’t.