President Barack Obama addresses a joint session of Congress in the House Chamber of the Capitol in Washington.
WASHINGTON – Setting out a bold, wide-ranging agenda for America despite the threats raised by economic recession, President Barack Obama tonight said his administration is “committed to a re-tooled, re-imagined auto industry that can compete and win.”
“Millions of jobs depend on it,” he said. “And I believe the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it.”
Delivering the speech to a joint session of Congress for the first time, Obama sketched out a sweeping set of plans for the nation, touching on everything from health care reform to a challenge to schools to lower drop out rates. And he took on the tough task of trying to explain to a nation why financial institutions must be bolstered if the recession is to come to an end, even though confidence is low on Wall Street.
He acknowledge it might take more money but said there is no other choice but to get credit flowing again if the nation is to start growing its economy. While promising to hold banks accountable for the money they get, he said, “The concern is that if we do not restart lending in this country, our recovery will be choked off before it even begins.”
“It’s not about helping banks – it’s about helping people,” he said. “Because when credit is available again, that young family can finally buy a new home. And then some company will hire workers to build it. And then those workers will have money to spend, and if they can get a loan too, maybe they’ll finally buy that car, or open their own business. Investors will return to the market, and American families will see their retirement secured once more.
“Slowly, but surely, confidence will return, and our economy will recover.”
The president was careful to say, however, that bad banks won’t be propped up and the lush perks and high compensation for Wall Street executives living on the taxpayers’ dime is over.
Recognizing the public’s anger toward financial institutions and a housing crisis that has led to a spike in foreclosures and, in turn, rising unemployment, Obama said action must be bold and the nation “cannot afford to govern out of anger or yield to the politics of the moment.”
The auto industry, too, he said, has been beset by “years of bad decision-making” and government shouldn’t protect the industry from “their own bad practices.” But – while not directly addressing the restructuring plans by Chrysler and General Motors being considered by his Treasury Department and an auto industry panel -- he said it is too big an industry to fail. He noted that his budget proposed to invest $15 billion a year in advanced technologies, including more fuel-efficient cars and trucks “built right here in America.”
He noted that now, “new plug in hybrids roll off our assembly lines but they will run on batteries made in Korea.” While some critics might argue his investment does more to grow government than business, he said it’s simply not true – and that he’s taking a lesson from the past, such as the GI Bill after World War II or the explosion of technology that accompanied John F. Kennedy’s call to put a man on the moon.
“In each case,” he said, “government didn’t supplant private enterprise, it catalyzed private enterprise. It created the conditions for thousands of entrepreneurs and new businesses to adapt and to thrive.”
“We are a nation that has seen promise amid peril and claimed opportunity from ordeal,” he said. “Now we must be that nation again.”
It wasn’t all about the economy – he talked about cutting the federal deficit in half by 2013, in part by allowing a tax cut for people making more than $250,000 a year to expire in 2011, and he discussed how the country’s leaders need to begin finding ways to address growing costs in Medicare and Social Security. And he said he will start bringing together businesses, workers, doctors and health care providers next week to begin working on health care reform.
He said that not all of the nation’s problems were caused simply by the housing crisis. Health care costs have been skyrocketing for years and too little has been done to end the nation’s reliance on foreign oil.
“Though all these challenges went unsolved,” he said, “we still managed to spend more money and pile up more debt, both as individuals and through our government.”
The “day of reckoning” is at hand, he said,
But while he offered a starkly realistic assessment of the issues facing the nation, he almost spoke a message of hope.
“Though we are living through difficult and uncertain times,” he said, “tonight I want every American to know this: We will rebuild, we will recover and the United States of American will emerge stronger than before.”
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment