President Obama took his case for his $800 billion economic recovery package to the American people on Monday, as the Senate cleared the way for passage of the bill and the White House prepared for its next major hurdle: selling Congress and the public on a fresh plan to bail out the nation’s banks.
Warning that a failure to act “could turn a crisis into a catastrophe,” Mr. Obama used his presidential platform ”” a prime-time news conference, the first of his presidency, in the grand setting of the White House East Room ”” to address head on the concerns about his approach, which has by and large failed to win the Republican support he sought.
“The plan is not perfect,” Mr. Obama said in an eight-minute speech before taking reporters’ questions. “No plan is. I can’t tell you for sure that everything in this plan will work exactly as we hope, but I can tell you with complete confidence that a failure to act will only deepen this crisis.”
The news conference was the centerpiece of an intense and highly orchestrated campaign by the administration to wrest control of the stimulus debate from Republicans and reframe it on Mr. Obama’s terms.
A far cry from “The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself…”
The CBO says the bailout will actually hurt the country!
We must get beyond the politics of fear to the politics of… catastrophe?!?
He could also have told us with equal confidence that the wrong action will [i]also[/i] deepen the crisis–and perpetuate it, too.
#1. My exact thoughts. “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”
#2, you are correct, and this has not been publicized much at all. Plug in ‘cbo obama stimulus’ on google news to see the full stories.
I think I’m gonna buy some of those shares that have hit bottom, and then sell them when the time is right. Y’know, buy low and sell high when the market rises? Optimistic, am I? Maybe……but who knows? This recession isn’t going to last forever.