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Edited on Thu Nov-04-10 02:48 PM by Kurt_and_Hunter
Oval office address to the Nation 12/15/10
I would like to begin by admitting fault. Like every person who has had the honor and privilege to hold this office, I came into Washington with high hopes that everyone here is deep down interested in the good of our nation and that if we could get along we could all move things forward to make life better for you… our employers, the American people.
For the last two years I have sought consensus… compromise solutions, even if I knew they were not the very best solutions.
But ladies and gentlemen, we are in a crisis.
Half measures and watered down solutions and trying to split the difference between fundamentally opposed world-views are just not getting the job done for America.
The time has come to put it on the line… to say exactly what we desperately need. And if that makes me unpopular then so be it. When the nation is in desperation and our dreams are fading away popularity is trivial. The next election is trivial.
What matters is you. Your lives are not trivial.
When our economy collapsed people stopped spending and borrowing. That cut a huge hole in our economy, and that hole is still there. It is still huge.
And as long as that hole is there we cannot recover.
And only the federal government can fill that hole in our economy so that it can struggle back to self-sustaining growth and prosperity for us all.
And that means government borrowing and spending. This is cold economic fact, not opinion. Only the federal government can pull us out of this mess and it isn’t cheap. But it is necessary. It is not optional.
We cannot doom ourselves to a generation of decline—people losing houses, wages going down, high unemployment, kids unable to go to college.
So here is what I am proposing as a blueprint for real, sustainable economic recovery. This is the right thing to do. Congress might want to block these desperately needed measures. If they do I will not relent. I will push these measures in the face of ANY obstacle and I will not back down because this is what is right for YOU. Not for me getting re-elected, not for somebody getting big campaign donations, not for Wall Street… not for someone looking for TV ratings… for YOU, the American family caught in an economic crisis that you do not deserve.
First, we need jobs…
(Insert ambitious and uncompromising Keynesian solutions here.)
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