President Barack Obama gave his don’t-call-it-a-State-of-the-Union address last night. Here’s the video:
We have lived through an era where too often, short-term gains were prized over long-term prosperity; where we failed to look beyond the next payment, the next quarter, or the next election. A surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy instead of an opportunity to invest in our future. Regulations were gutted for the sake of a quick profit at the expense of a healthy market. People bought homes they knew they couldn’t afford from banks and lenders who pushed those bad loans anyway. And all the while, critical debates and difficult decisions were put off for some other time on some other day.
Well that day of reckoning has arrived, and the time to take charge of our future is here.
Now is the time to act boldly and wisely - to not only revive this economy, but to build a new foundation for lasting prosperity. Now is the time to jumpstart job creation, re-start lending, and invest in areas like energy, health care, and education that will grow our economy, even as we make hard choices to bring our deficit down. That is what my economic agenda is designed to do, and that’s what I’d like to talk to you about tonight.
Here’s Change to Win Chair Anna Burger’s reaction to the speech:
Tonight, I was reminded of why working men and women all around this country cast their vote last November for Barack Obama. President Obama demonstrated vision, courage and the bold leadership America needs as he confronts the broken healthcare system that has become a tremendous burden on working families and a constant threat to an already fragile economy.
As our nation faces the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, President Obama signaled that our government is ready to make the big reforms necessary to put working families back on the path of prosperity and the economy back on the road to recovery. It is clear that we cannot solve our nation’s economic crisis without fixing our broken healthcare system, and our President laid out a framework to address the daunting healthcare challenges before us.
Too many working families are one healthcare crisis away from financial ruin - families like that of Paula Hall, a child care worker from Spokane, who—failing to qualify for state aid and unable to afford COBRA—lost her home to spiraling medical debt. Piecemeal reform won’t work for Paula, and it won’t work for America.
The working men and women of Change to Win stand ready to work with the President, Democrats and Republicans, business, and workers from across the nation to find real solutions that achieve comprehensive healthcare reform this year. With 14,000 more Americans losing their health coverage every day, we’ve reached the death knell of the status quo. Now is the time for all of us to get to work and make the big reforms necessary to bring about real solutions and deliver affordable and accessible healthcare to every man, woman and child in America.
So what did you think?