[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 14 (Monday, February 1, 2010)]
[Senate]
[Pages S390-S392]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   BUDGET OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2011--PM 43

  The PRESIDING OFFICER laid before the Senate the following message 
from the President of the United States, together with an accompanying 
report; which was referred jointly, pursuant to the order of January 
30, 1975 as modified by the order of April 11, 1986; to the Committees 
on the Budget; and Appropriations:

To the Congress of the United States:
  We begin a new year at a moment of continuing challenge for the 
American people. Even as we recover from crisis, millions of families 
are still feeling the pain of lost jobs and savings. Businesses are 
still struggling to find affordable loans to expand and hire workers. 
Our Nation is still experiencing the consequences of a deep and lasting 
recession, even as we have seen encouraging signs that the turmoil of 
the past 2 years is waning. Moving from recession to recovery, and 
ultimately to prosperity, remains at the heart of my Administration's 
efforts. This Budget provides a blueprint for the work ahead.
  But in order to understand where we are going in the coming year, it 
is important to remember where we started just 1 year ago. Last 
January, the United States faced an economic crisis unlike any we had 
known in generations. Irresponsible risk-taking and debt-fueled 
speculation--unchecked by sound oversight--led to the near-collapse of 
our financial system. Our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was falling at 
the fastest rate in a quarter-century. Five trillion dollars of 
Americans' household wealth had evaporated in just 12 weeks as stocks, 
pensions, and home values plummeted. We were losing an average of 
700,000 jobs each month, equivalent to the population of the State of 
Vermont. The capital and credit markets, integral to the normal 
functioning of our economy, were virtually frozen. The fear among 
economists--from across the political spectrum--was that we risked 
sinking into a second Great Depression.
  Immediately, we undertook a series of difficult steps to prevent that 
outcome. We acted to get lending flowing again so that businesses could 
get loans to buy equipment and ordinary Americans could get financing 
to buy homes and cars, go to college, and start or run businesses. We 
enacted measures to foster greater stability in the housing market, 
help responsible homeowners stay in their homes, and help to stop the 
broader decline in home values. To achieve this, and to prevent an 
economic collapse that would have affected millions of additional 
families, we had no choice but to use authority enacted under the 
previous Administration to extend assistance to some of the very banks 
and financial institutions whose actions had helped precipitate the 
turmoil. We also took steps to prevent the rapid dissolution of the 
American auto industry--which faced a crisis partly of its own making--
to prevent the loss of hundreds of thousands of additional jobs during 
an already fragile time. Many of these decisions were not popular, but 
we deemed them

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necessary to prevent a deeper and longer recession.
  Even as we worked to stop the economic freefall and address the 
crises in our banking sector, our housing market, and our auto 
industry, we also began attacking the economic crisis on a broader 
front. Less than 1 month after taking office, we enacted the most 
sweeping economic recovery package in history: the American Recovery 
and Reinvestment Act. The Recovery Act not only provided tax cuts to 
small businesses and 95 percent of working families and provided 
emergency relief to those out of work or without health insurance; it 
also began to lay a new foundation for long-term economic growth and 
prosperity. With investments in health care, education, infrastructure, 
and clean energy, the Recovery Act both saved and created millions of 
jobs and began the hard work of transforming our economy to thrive in 
the modern, global marketplace and reverse the financial decline 
working families experienced in the last decade. Because of these and 
other steps, we can safely say we have avoided the depression many 
feared, and we are no longer facing the potential collapse of our 
financial system. But our work is far from complete.

  First and foremost, there are still too many Americans without work. 
The steps we have taken have helped stop the staggering job losses we 
were experiencing at the beginning of last year. But the damage has 
been done. More than seven million jobs were lost since the recession 
began 2 years ago. This represents not only a terrible human tragedy, 
but also a very deep hole from which we have to climb out. Until our 
businesses are hiring again and jobs are being created to replace those 
we have lost--until America is back at work--my Administration will not 
rest and this recovery will not be finished.
  That is why this Budget includes plans to encourage small businesses 
to hire as quickly and effectively as possible, to make additional 
investments in infrastructure, and to jump-start clean energy 
investments that will help the private sector create good jobs in 
America.
  Long before this crisis hit, middle-class families were under growing 
strain. For decades, Washington failed to address fundamental 
weaknesses in the economy: rising health-care costs, a growing 
dependence on foreign oil, and an education system unable to prepare 
our children for the jobs of the future. In recent years, spending 
bills and tax cuts for the wealthy were approved without paying for any 
of it, leaving behind a mountain of debt. And while Wall Street gambled 
without regard for the consequences, Washington looked the other way.
  As a result, the economy may have been working very well for those at 
the very top, but it was not working for the middle class. Year after 
year, Americans were forced to work longer hours and spend more time 
away from their loved ones, while their incomes flat-lined and their 
sense of economic security evaporated. Beneath the statistics are the 
stories of hardship I've heard all across America. For too many, there 
has long been a sense that the American dream--a chance to make your 
own way, to support your family, save for college and retirement, own a 
home--was slipping away. And this sense of anxiety has been combined 
with a deep frustration that Washington either didn't notice, or didn't 
care enough to act.
  Those days are over. In the aftermath of this crisis, what is clear 
is that we cannot simply go back to business as usual. We cannot go 
back to an economy that yielded cycle after cycle of speculative booms 
and painful busts. We cannot continue to accept an education system in 
which our students trail their peers in other countries, and a health-
care system in which exploding costs put our businesses at a 
competitive disadvantage and squeeze the incomes of our workers. We 
cannot continue to ignore the clean energy challenge and stand still 
while other countries move forward in the emerging industries of the 
21st Century. And we cannot continue to borrow against our children's 
future, or allow special interests to determine how public dollars are 
spent. That is why, as we strive to meet the crisis of the moment, we 
are continuing to lay a new foundation for the future.
  Already, we have made historic strides to reform and improve our 
schools, to pass health insurance reform, to build a new clean energy 
economy, to cut wasteful spending, and to limit the influence of 
lobbyists and special interests so that we are better serving the 
national interest. However, there is much left to do, and this Budget 
lays out the way ahead.
  Because an educated workforce is essential in a 21st Century global 
economy, we are undertaking a reform of elementary and secondary school 
funding by setting high standards, encouraging innovation, and 
rewarding success; making the successful Race to the Top fund permanent 
and opening it up to innovative school districts; investing in 
educating the next generation of scientists and engineers; and putting 
our Nation closer to meeting the goal of leading the world in new 
college graduates by 2020. Moreover, since in today's economy learning 
must last a lifetime, my Administration will reform the job-training 
system, streamlining it and focusing it on the high-growth sectors of 
the economy.
  Because even the best-trained workers in the world can't compete if 
our businesses are saddled with rapidly increasing health-care costs, 
we're fighting to reform our Nation's broken health insurance system 
and relieve this unsustainable burden. My Budget includes funds to lay 
the groundwork for these reforms--by investing in health information 
technology, patient-centered research, and prevention and wellness--as 
well as to improve the health of the Nation by increasing the number of 
primary care physicians, protecting the safety of our food and drugs, 
and investing in critical biomedical research.
  Because small businesses are critical creators of new jobs and 
economic growth, the Budget eliminates capital gains taxes for 
investments in small firms and includes measures to increase these 
firms' access to the loans they need to meet payroll, expand their 
operations, and hire new workers.
  Because we know the nation that leads in clean energy will be the 
nation that leads the world, the Budget creates the incentives to build 
a new clean energy economy--from new loan guarantees that will 
encourage a range of renewable energy efforts and new nuclear power 
plants to spurring the development of clean energy on Federal lands. 
More broadly, the Budget makes critical investments that will ensure 
that we continue to lead the world in new fields and industries: 
doubling research and development funding in key physical sciences 
agencies; expanding broadband networks across our country; and working 
to promote American exports abroad.
  And because we know that our future is dependent on maintaining 
American leadership abroad and ensuring our security at home, the 
Budget funds all the elements of our national power--including our 
military--to achieve our goals of winding down the war in Iraq, 
executing our new strategy in Afghanistan, and fighting al Qaeda all 
over the world. To honor the sacrifice of the men and women who 
shoulder this burden and who have throughout our history, the Budget 
also provides significant resources, including advanced appropriations, 
to care for our Nation's veterans.
  Rising to these challenges is the responsibility we bear for the 
future of our children, our grandchildren, and our Nation. This is an 
obligation to change not just what we do in Washington, but how we do 
it.
  As we look to the future, we must recognize that the era of 
irresponsibility in Washington must end. On the day my Administration 
took office, we faced an additional $7.5 trillion in national debt by 
the end of this decade as a result of the failure to pay for two large 
tax cuts, primarily for the wealthiest Americans, and a new entitlement 
program. We also inherited the worst recession since the Great 
Depression--which, even before we took any action, added an additional 
$3 trillion to the national debt. Our response to this recession, the 
Recovery Act, which has been critical to restoring economic growth, 
will add an additional $1 trillion to the debt--only 10 percent of 
these costs. In total, the surpluses we enjoyed at the start of the 
last decade have disappeared; instead, we are $12 trillion deeper in 
debt. In the long term, we cannot have sustainable and durable economic 
growth without getting our fiscal house in order.

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  That is why even as we increased our short-term deficit to rescue the 
economy, we have refused to go along with business as usual, taking 
responsibility for every dollar we spend, eliminating what we don't 
need, and making the programs we do need more efficient. We are taking 
on health care--the single biggest threat to our Nation's fiscal 
future--and doing so in a fiscally responsible way that will not add a 
dime to our deficits and will lower the rate of health-care cost growth 
in the long run.
  We are implementing the Recovery Act with an unprecedented degree of 
oversight and openness so that anyone anywhere can see where their tax 
dollars are going. We've banned lobbyists from serving on agency 
advisory boards and commissions, which had become dominated by special 
interests. We are using new technology to make Government more 
accessible to the American people. And last year, we combed the budget, 
cutting millions of dollars of waste and eliminating excess wherever we 
could--including outdated weapons systems that even the Pentagon said 
it did not want or need.
  We continued that process in this Budget as well, streamlining what 
does work and ending programs that do not--all while making it more 
possible for Americans to judge our progress for themselves. The Budget 
includes more than 120 programs for termination, reduction, or other 
savings for a total of approximately $23 billion in 2011, as well as an 
aggressive effort to reduce the tens of billions of dollars in improper 
Government payments made each year.
  To help put our country on a fiscally sustainable path, we will 
freeze nonsecurity discretionary funding for 3 years. This freeze will 
require a level of discipline with Americans' tax dollars and a number 
of hard choices and painful tradeoffs not seen in Washington for many 
years. But it is what needs to be done to restore fiscal responsibility 
as we begin to rebuild our economy.
  In addition to closing loopholes that allow wealthy investment 
managers to not pay income taxes on their earnings and ending subsidies 
for big oil, gas, and coal companies, the Budget eliminates the Bush 
tax cuts for those making more than $250,000 a year and devotes those 
resources instead to reducing the deficit. Our Nation could not afford 
these tax cuts when they passed, and it cannot afford them now.
  And the Budget calls for those in the financial sector--who benefited 
so greatly from the extraordinary measures taken to rescue them from a 
crisis that was largely of their own making--to finally recognize their 
obligation to taxpayers. The legislation establishing the Troubled 
Asset Relief Program (TARP) included a provision requiring the 
Administration to devise a way for these banks and firms to pay back 
the American taxpayer. That is why in this Budget we have included a 
fee on the largest and most indebted financial firms to ensure that 
taxpayers are fully compensated for the extraordinary support they 
provided, while providing a deterrent to the risky practices that 
contributed to this crisis.
  Yet even after taking these steps, our fiscal situation remains 
unacceptable. A decade of irresponsible choices has created a fiscal 
hole that will not be solved by a typical Washington budget process 
that puts partisanship and parochial interests above our shared 
national interest. That is why, working with the Congress, we will 
establish a bipartisan fiscal commission charged with identifying 
additional policies to put our country on a fiscally sustainable path--
balancing the Budget, excluding interest payments on the debt, by 2015.
  This past year, we have seen the consequences of those in power 
failing to live up to their responsibilities to shareholders and 
constituents. We have seen how Main Street is as linked to Wall Street 
as our economy is to those of other nations. And we have seen the 
results of building an economy on a shaky foundation, rather than on 
the bedrock fundamentals of innovation, small business, good schools, 
smart investment, and long-term growth.
  We have also witnessed the resilience of the American people--our 
unique ability to pick ourselves up and forge ahead even when times are 
tough. All across our country, there are students ready to learn, 
workers eager to work, scientists on the brink of discovery, 
entrepreneurs seeking the chance to open a small business, and once-
shuttered factories just waiting to whir back to life in burgeoning 
industries.
  This is a Nation ready to meet the challenges of this new age and to 
lead the world in this new century. Americans are willing to work hard, 
and, in return, they expect to be able to find a good job, afford a 
home, send their children to world-class schools, receive high-quality 
and affordable health care, and enjoy retirement security in their 
later years. These are the building blocks of the middle class that 
make America strong, and it is our duty to honor the drive, ingenuity, 
and fortitude of the American people by laying the groundwork upon 
which they can pursue these dreams and realize the promise of American 
life.
  This Budget is our plan for how to start accomplishing this in the 
coming fiscal year. As we look back on the progress of the past 12 
months and look forward to the work ahead, I have every confidence that 
we can--and will--rise to the challenge that our people and our history 
set for us.
  These have been tough times, and there will be difficult months 
ahead. But the storms of the past are receding; the skies are 
brightening; and the horizon is beckoning once more.
                                                        Barack Obama.  
The White House, February 1, 2010.

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