President Obama's Weekly Address: "Recovery and the Jobs of the Future"

Here is the full transcript. Key points.

*"We came into office facing the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression."
*"As a result of the swift and aggressive action we took in the first few months of this year, we’ve been able to pull our financial system and our economy back from the brink."
*"The Recovery Act wasn’t designed to restore the economy to full health on its own, but to provide the boost necessary to stop the free fall. "
*"In a little over one hundred days, this Recovery Act has worked as intended. "
*"...as I made clear at the time it was passed, the Recovery Act was not designed to work in four months – it was designed to work over two years... We must let it work the way it’s supposed to, with the understanding that in any recession, unemployment tends to recover more slowly than other measures of economic activity. "
*"Even as we rescue this economy from a full blown crisis, I have insisted that we must rebuild it better than before."
*"Without serious reforms, we are destined to either see more crises, or suffer stagnant growth rates for the foreseeable future, or a combination of the two. That’s a future I absolutely reject."
*" I have been firm in insisting that both health care reform and clean energy legislation cannot add to our deficit."
*"This year has been and will continue to be a year of rescuing our economy from disaster."
*"But just as important will be the work of rebuilding a long term engine for economic growth. It won’t be easy, and there will continue to be those who argue that we have to put off hard decisions that we have already deferred for far too long."

I strongly agree with that last point in particular; it is long, long, looooooooong past time for us to deal with problems like: the screwed-up "health care" (using the term loosely) system in this country; our antiquated, obsolete, inefficient energy economy; the tremendous threat of global warming; our structural deficits, which come about largely because of runaway entitlement (particularly Medicare) expenditures; and our crumbling infrastructure. That's why there's such a strong tension here, between "stimulating" the economy in the short run and fixing it in the long run. Sometimes those goals don't fit together neatly, and I'd lean more towards getting things right for the long haul (but with full realization that people are hurting now, and we have to take action to help them).

In short, we're in an extremely difficult situation right now, inherited from the Bush presidency, but Barack Obama and Congress are working to fix it. I'd like to see Congress work faster AND more aggressively on crucial items like clean energy and health care reform, but given the complete lack of Republican cooperation from the likes of Eric Cantor and Mitch McConnell, plus the timidity of a few Democrats, plus the conservative nature of the U.S. Senate (which, as our friend George Allen once said, moves at the pace of a "wounded sea slug"), we're moving slower than we should be in this time of crisis. Please tell your representative that you want action on President Obama's agenda, and you want it now. Thank you.