My fellow Americans,
A week ago, I told some of my most passionate supporters in Nevada that I found it hard to believe that the Republicans, who ditched the American economy not too long ago, now are demanding that you give them back the keys.
While I got a few laughs and some positive comments from that remark, I now realize that I may have erred in comparing the American economy to a ditched car. It was never my intention to make light of the earth-shaking events that clobbered the American economy the year I was running for the Presidency.
The American economy in 2008 in many respects looked like the economy did in the years leading up to the Great Depression. Banks, insurance companies, investment houses were all sinking. They had taken in water, the turbulent waters of the mortgage meltdown, the houses whose values were falling like rocks to the bottom of the sea. Americans had lost their jobs - 8 million of them. For the first time in a long time, American optimism had been replaced by a sense of impending doom. A foreboding sense that a huge comet from outer space was on a collision course with our planet earth.
Thus, to compare the American economy to a ditched car was wrong - utterly wrong.
What really happened in 2008 was that an earthquake - the mortgage meltdown - had so violently shaken the American economy that a side of a Rocky Mountain had broken away and had been sliding down a snow packed slope. It was a wayward mountain side the size of Rhode Island that was fast slipping down that slope. At the end of that slope was a drop no less than 100 miles deep. It was a straight drop.
I remember being in the heat of the campaign in 2008 and being briefed by my advisers about the meltdown in the financial markets that was threatening the whole American economy and eventually the world's economy.
I watched with horror as news filtered in that the American economy was headed for a steep fall. I, like millions of Americans, was relieved when I learned that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson took the near-desperate step of sponsoring a bank bailout plan that promised to end the dangerous slide of the American economy.
It would cost close to a trillion dollars, but at least the economy could be saved. There were still danger signs everywhere, but the bailout of Wall Street would at least buy time for our economic planners to permanently halt that slide towards that ravine that was a straight drop 100 miles deep.
Mr. Bernanke and Mr. Paulson, aided by the U.S. Congress, was able to come up with a huge tree. Imagine a tree so huge it is almost as big as the state of Rhode Island. This was the $1 trillion tree that stopped the descent of the American economy into the ravine.
When I assumed the presidency in 2008, though the economy was no longer sliding, the weight of that rock the size of Rhode Island was proving to be too much for even that gargantuan tree. It appeared that the tree would eventually break and the rock would continue down that snow-packed slope and into that ravine.
Though the slide had been stopped, the lack of economic activity threatened to crush that huge tree. Nobody in America was buying. Nobody was buying cars, houses, durable goods, investments, shopping mall goods. Economic activity had come to a dead stop. If that condition went on too long, most people in America would lose their jobs, because if nobody was buying anything, there would be no need for American and foreign companies to produce anything.
It was clear that the solution lay in the government itself providing the spark that would create the energy that would make the American economy spring back to life. Every responsible person in America agreed that a stimulus bill costing at least a trillion dollars was needed. Some economists argued that the stimulus bill should be bigger than one trillion. We in America propose, but the U.S. Congress disposes. Congress would pass a stimulus bill that was a shade under a trillion dollars.
With our stimulus bill, the bailout of the American car industry, the cash-for-clunkers, the full-scale immersion into solar, wind and turbine energy industry, my administration, the Monetary Board, the U.S. Congress and the American business community all working together, we were able to jump-start the American economy so that now we are in the midst of an economic expansion that is on a trajectory to an eventual full economic recovery.
We are pulling that huge rock back up the slope, inch by precious inch. But, it is an activity that is historic and epochal in its challenges. Those old enough to remember the Great Depression perhaps can remember that the recovery from it took more than ten years. The final piece of the puzzle came when the U.S. entered the war in Europe and Asia and American industry went into full-employment.
While the American economy did not go into a Great Depression in 2008 and 2009, the enormous challenges before us were clear for everyone to see. We had lost 8 million jobs during the Bush years, we were still losing 750,000 jobs a month when I took over, and many of the jobs already lost and we were continuing to lose we knew would never come back - because they were manufacturing jobs in industries that had fled America for China, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and other Asian countries.
My biggest challenge was how to put people back to work. That was the only way the country could slowly pull that rock back up that slope and reconnect it to that Rocky Mountain side from which it had broken off.
Thanks to American ingenuity and the heroes of Main Street - the small employers, the big multinationals that are now hiring again - we are gradually seeing the rebirth of American optimism. The economy has added jobs again, though the jobs that are being added have not been enough. We need to do much, much better in this area. We cannot let a whole generation of Americans - today's college graduates - spend the best years of their young lives unemployed and uncertain of their future.
We need to create jobs by the hundreds of thousands and eventually by the millions. We need to accelerate the pace that that big rock goes up that slope. We must push harder, and pull with more force. I believe that I have been leading in this effort. I've had my focus on the economy from Day One. People in America may not know this, because I did not constantly remind them of it, but since I got my initial briefings on the state of the American economy at the beginning of my term in 2009, I've had my eye on that rock. I knew it was going to be very difficult, one of the most difficult things that any American president would ever be challenged to accomplish.
I believe in my heart that we are on the right track, even though there are times when I am tempted to be discouraged. The pace of our recovery is so slow and I know there are millions of Americans who are having an incredibly tough time making ends meet. And the generation that just graduated from college must be wondering if they will ever find meaningful jobs in their lifetime.
But we must not allow the few among us who want a return to the policies that got us into this mess to prevail in the ongoing national debate. We are making progress, we are pushing that rock back up that slippery slope slowly but surely.
If we turn the U.S. Congress back to the Republicans, who along with the previous administration caused the earthquake that broke the side of that Rocky Mountain to split apart and go on that downhill slide, we are making a big, big mistake. The Republicans threaten to undo what we have already done. They want to return to the policies that caused the economic mess we're in.
They are not just saying NO to everything that my administration is proposing, they are also trying to convince us that their old policies of no regulation, of every man for himself, of low taxes for the rich, of hundreds of billions in tax breaks for the oil industry, of artificially generating economic activity by going to war in countries like Iraq will work. Even though we still have the memory of how the previous administration dragged our country to an economic collapse.
We Americans are a patient people, as long as we are given the facts. Just the facts.
I hope you, my fellow Americans, will not lose faith, that you will see that though the American recovery is probably the most difficult undertaking of our lives, we can get the job done. We are Americans. We never give up.
It will be tantamount to giving up if we give the reins of our economy back to the same people in Congress - the Republicans - who got us into our mess in the first place. If America must replace the Democrats in Congress, please do not replace them with the same people who ruined our economy through bad policy decisions. Can't think of any others who could do a better job than the Democratic legislators? That's because there are none. Despite the presence of Tea Party activists who at best have only muddied thoughts to offer about the American economy.
I appeal to the American people to stay the course. I need the help of a Democrat-controlled U.S. Congress to pull that huge rock back up that slope. We don't need a Congress that is pulling in the opposite direction - back towards the profligate policies of the past.
My fellow Americans, I appeal to your reason. I know it is difficult for you not to blame the party that is in power while you continue to suffer through the worst economic times since the Great Depression. I thoroughly understand your frustration. But it would be a much bigger mistake to hand Congress back to the same legislators who doubled the national debt in the 8 years of the Bush administration, who presided over the loss of 8 million jobs many of which will never come back, who refused to regulate the industries that sorely needed regulation.
It took us many years, nearly ten years to get us into this economic mess. Please do not give up on us after 18 months. We must redouble our efforts, but most of all, we must work together. The Democrats in Congress are wracking their brains, figuring out how best to generate more economic activity in this country. I need their help. Don't give me a Congress that will work against me in the coming years. You elected me to at least four years to get our country back on track. I need a Congress that will work with me and not against me.
A Republican Congress - which is saying NO to everything I propose - will surely say NO in the future.
If you will not do it for me, do it for yourselves. You need an administration and a Congress that are working together and not against each other.
Good night, and God bless America.
