Obama News Conference 24Mar09

Now, before I take questions from the correspondents, I want to give everyone who's watching tonight an update on the steps we're taking to move this economy from recession to recovery, and ultimately to prosperity.

It's a strategy to create jobs, to help responsible homeowners, to restart lending and to grow our economy over the long term.

We know that an economy built on reckless speculation, inflated home prices and maxed-out credit cards does not create lasting wealth. It creates the illusion of prosperity, and it's endangered us all.

We invest in the renewable sources of energy that will lead to new jobs, new businesses and less dependence on foreign oil. We invest in our schools and our teachers, so that our children have the skills they need to compete with any workers in the world.

We invest in reform that will bring down the cost of health care for families, businesses and our government.

The best way to bring our deficit down in the long run is not with a budget that continues the very same policies that have led us to a narrow prosperity and massive debt. It's with a budget that leads to broad economic growth by moving from an era of borrow and spend to one where we save and invest.

That's why this budget is inseparable from this recovery, because it is what lays the foundation for a secure and lasting prosperity.

The road to that prosperity is still long, and we will hit our share of bumps and setbacks before it ends.

What we can't do, though, is sacrifice long-term growth, investments that are critical to the future, and that's why my budget focuses on health care, energy, education, the kinds of things that can build a foundation for long-term economic growth, as opposed to the fleeting prosperity that we've seen over the last several years.

I mean, when you have an economy in which the majority of growth is coming from the financial sector, when AIG selling a derivative is counted as an increase in the gross domestic product, then that's not a model for sustainable economic growth.

And what we have to do is invest in those things that will allow the American's capacity for ingenuity and innovation, their ability to take risks, but make sure that those risks are grounded in good products and good services that they believe they can market to the rest of the country, that those models of economic growth are what we're promoting, and that's what I think our budget does.

We've got to move to a new energy era, and that means moving away from polluting energy sources towards cleaner energy sources. That is a potential engine for economic growth.

I have confidence that we're going to be able to get a budget done that's reflective of what needs to happen in order to make sure that America grows.

the main difference between the budget that we presented and the budget that came out of the Congressional Budget Office is assumptions about growth.

They're assuming a growth rate of 2.2 percent; we're assuming a growth rate of 2.6 percent. Those small differences end up adding up to a lot of money.

If we don't tackle energy, if we don't improve our education system, if we don't drive down the costs of health care, if we're not making serious investments in science and technology and our infrastructure, then we won't grow 2.6 percent, we won't grow 2.2 percent. We won't grow.

And so what we've said is: let's make the investments that ensure that we meet our growth targets that put us on a pathway to growth as opposed to a situation in which we're not making those investments and we still have trillion-dollar deficits.

And so what we're trying to emphasize is, let's make sure that we're making the investments that we need to grow to meet those growth targets.

It's going to be an impossible task to balance our budget or even approximate it if we are not boosting our growth rates. And that's why our budget focuses on the investments we need to make that happen.

Then it's going to be absolutely important for us to take another look and say: Are we growing as fast as we need to grow?

How are we going to create not just prosperity here, but work with other countries for global peace and prosperity?