From Barack Obama's non-State-of-the-Union-State-of-the-Union address to a joint session of Congress this evening at 9:01 pm Eastern Time.We have lived through an era where too often, short-term gains were prized over long-term prosperity; where we failed to look beyond the next payment, the next quarter, or the next election. A surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy instead of an opportunity to invest in our future. Regulations were gutted for the sake of a quick profit at the expense of a healthy market. People bought homes they knew they couldn’t afford from banks and lenders who pushed those bad loans anyway. And all the while, critical debates and difficult decisions were put off for some other time on some other day.
Well that day of reckoning has arrived, and the time to take charge of our future is here.
Now is the time to act boldly and wisely – to not only revive this economy, but to build a new foundation for lasting prosperity. Now is the time to jumpstart job creation, re-start lending, and invest in areas like energy, health care, and education that will grow our economy, even as we make hard choices to bring our deficit down. That is what my economic agenda is designed to do, and that’s what I’d like to talk to you about tonight.
Jeffrey Feldman (the "Frameshop" guy) tweets that "Obama['s] speech looks like a blend of JFK, Johnson, and (possibly) Reagan style rhetoric." Wow, if that's the case, this could really be one heck of a speech!
h/t: White House blog
UPDATE: Full text of speech in comments section.
