True Liberal Nexus

My fellow Americans,

I’m happy to report that I’ve finally found a solution to the jobs crisis — I’m blaming it on Congress.

You see, while I’m ready to roll up my sleeves over the next several weeks and next several months, Congress is lollygagging.  This is so frustrating!  I’ve urged Congress not to wait, but to act right now on some brilliant proposals of mine:

• Invest in rebuilding our roads and our bridges and our railways and our infrastructure.  (I came up with this one);
• Streamline our patent process.  Widgets & wangdoodles would already be pouring out of American factories, if Congress would only vote on the patent bill sitting there right now;
• Advance trade agreements that will help businesses sell more American-made goods and services to Asia and South America.  Congress could do that today. That could be done right now.

There are all sorts of bills and trade agreements before Congress right now that could get all these ideas moving. All of them have bipartisan support. All of them could pass immediately. And I urge Congress not to wait.

It’s really not fair that Congress’ inaction is forcing me to work on this, because I’ve already done so much.  In December, I boosted the economy by signing a tax cut that put a thousand dollars in the pockets of American families, which is nothing to sneeze at when you’ve been out of work for over a year.

A lot of middle-class families sure would feel more secure if they knew that tax cut will still be around next year. That’s a change that we could make right now, by making cuts to Social Security.  But Congress is too lazy.

I admit, it’s not entirely Congress’ fault that our economy sucks so bad.   There are many other things I can blame, from natural disasters and spikes in gas prices, to state and local budget cuts.  And those Greeks and Europeans had to go and ruin everything by giving investors the jitters.

These economic challenges weren’t created overnight — they’re W’s fault.  So don’t expect me to solve them overnight — I’ll need another four years at the least.

I get letters from folks hit hard by this economy.  Some of them pour their guts out in these letters. They feel that leaders in Washington have let them down.  To them, I say:  yes, Congress has let you down.

You can see how I’m busting my butt.  But I can only concentrate on one thing at a time, and we can’t solve the jobs crisis until we solve the debt ceiling crisis first. To put our economy on a sounder footing, we’ve got to rein in our deficits and get the government to live within its means, while still making the investments to make us more competitive in the future.  I’ve urged Congress to quickly move in both these contradictory directions, but they refuse to budge.

Still, we’ve had some good meetings with Congress.  We had a good meeting yesterday, and we’re gonna meet again today.  We’re gonna work through the weekend to solve this crisis with as many meetings as it takes.

Once the markets know that we have a serious plan to deal with our debt and deficit, they’ll start investing to grow and hire.  That’ll provide more confidence to the rest of the world as well, so that they are committed to investing in America.  And then — Presto! — the economy will be fixed, and I can go back to my real job, running for re-election.

I’ll keep you updated on my progress.

— Barack

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