Obama's Presidential Address to Congress

Perhaps more anticipated than most other President's 1st talks to a joint session of Congress, on Tuesday, President Barack Obama laid down his game plan for the country. It covered every area that he will be focusing on during his first term.

First let me make sure to mention that President Obama had a nice shout-out welcome to the first lady which was a nice touch and once again showed that Barack is not your father's president.

The talk was strong, firm and light on details, all of which were important. Complaints from the right said that there weren't many details, but really, we don't want to get into it. The talk was an hour without a lot of details. That is what the release of the budget outline on Thursday was all about.

Some important statements:

"We will rebuild, we will recover, we will be stronger than before."
- confidence is the life blood of the retail economy and it is in the tank right now. Knowing the President believes things will get better will begin to raise public confidence.

"Banks need to provide credit or our recovery will be choked off"
- tough to find anyone who will disagree with this, the problem is how to we get this to happen.

"We can't govern out of anger."
- Yeah, some companies and people who were irresponsible will wind up getting bailed out, but since we are climbing a mountain together and are all tied together, if anyone falls, we can't ignore the fact that it will also pull us down.

"We will do whatever is required to be successful. This recovery will require more than we have even set aside."
- Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman has been saying that the government needs to spend 4% of GDP to have a successful stimulus and the first bill represents about 2.5% (and some of that money really isn't stimulus spending). Many of us have been thinking that there would probably need to be more spending and this was the first sign that the Obama Administration agrees.

"Health Care reform will not wait another year."
- The gauntlet has been thrown down.

"Every American needs more than a high school education. And dropping out of high school is no longer an option. It's not just quitting on yourself it is quitting on your country."
- This was pretty powerful. Also said that education begins at home and is not a Democratic or Republican issue, it is American. Nice.

"We are going to go line by line to remove expenditures that do not make sense"
- I felt like I was watching the movie Dave

"We are not quitters."
- Entire premise of the talk summarized in 4 words.

I don't know if they will get this right, but thinking back on previous administrations, I am happy that this one is in place right now.