INTERVIEW OF THE PRESIDENT
BY COLUMNISTS
Aboard Air Force One
En Route Chicago, Illinois
5:05 P.M. EST
THE PRESIDENT: How are we going to run this thing? Are you
guys all taking turns?
Q Yes, we plotted it all out.
Q We did. And I think we all feel, not surprisingly, a
question -- the first question would be what lessons are you
taking out of the experience of passing the stimulus bill in
terms of how you will deal with congressional Democrats,
congressional Republicans, and for that matter, the country, in
moving forward your agenda. What did you learn from this
experience?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, first of all, let me describe for you
the process and the substance of how we put this package
together. And then I’ll be happy to talk about the politics of
it. During the transition I came in, and my first charge to my
economic team was canvas economists across the political
spectrum and present to me as diverse a set of views as
possible, and a set of recommendations in terms of how we can
get the economy moving again and put people back to work.
Now, at that point when we started, we hadn’t yet seen
December’s job report, January’s job report, but we knew that
things seemed to be worsening rather than getting better.
Almost to a economist, there was a consensus that we needed a
large stimulus package not as the silver bullet to solve our
economic problems, but as a necessary component to solving our
economic problems, and in terms of scope, that we were going to
need something between $600 billion and $1.3 trillion. That was
the range that was presented to us.
There also was consensus among economists that the best
approach to spending that much money and getting the stimulus
out of it was to diversify a little bit, so have a tax cut
component -- there was a generally strong feeling that tax cuts
targeted at people who were most likely to spend would have the
biggest impact; a state fiscal relief component, or a countercyclical
spending component, so everything from -- food stamps
to unemployment insurance -- again, stuff that would be spent
out quickly and, in some cases, help prevent a worsening of
layoffs and a spiral downward. And then a third component of
infrastructure.
Now, each of these components had pluses and minuses. For
example, tax cuts, you can get them out quick, but the general
view is that you don’t necessarily see a dollar of spending by
consumers for every tax cut they receive. Infrastructure, you
get probably the biggest multiplier effect -- for every dollar
you spend you might get $1.5 worth of demand out there, but
necessarily you can’t get all those infrastructure projects done
within a two-year time frame and the start-ups may be longer.
So our whole goal was to provide a framework for Congress
that presented the best mix based on the best available
information that we’d gotten. I raise this because I think that
some of the critics ended up fastening on this pet project or
this program that they suggested was not stimulative; in fact,
it would be hard to find economists who would argue that the
guts of the program, the core of what just passed the House and
hopefully will pass the Senate while we’re in the air or shortly
after we land is not pretty well designed to get the economy
moving again.
And one last point -- one last goal that we set out, and
that was if we were going to spend this much money, our number
one priority being to get jobs in place and to get the economy
moving again, wouldn’t it also be helpful for us to make sure
that we laid some made -- that we made an investment in long-
term economic growth -- that we put a down payment on things
that have been deferred for too long? So if we’re going to
spend money on education, then can we try to introduce some
reform elements into the education portion? If we are going to
tackle health care by making COBRA more affordable, can we also
look at health IT as a way of driving down costs over the long
term? How much infrastructure can we design around clean
energy?
Now, again, there’s some tensions on that front because
some of the most innovative down payments might not spend out in
two years. One of the things I was pushing for hard was can we
get the entire smart grid done, and it turns out that actually,
historically, a lot of these lines are laid by private
companies, so we couldn’t spend as much as you would think on
that part of infrastructure, but we have kick-stared it in the
package.
All right, anyway, that’s all the substance of it. Now, in
terms of what I’ve learned on the politics of it, I think what
I’ve learned is that I’ve got a great team because we moved a
very big piece of legislation through Congress in record time.
And that was not easy to do. And I think the end product is not
a hundred percent of what we would want, but it is a very good
start on moving things forward.
I made every effort to reach out to Republicans early to
get their input and to get their buy-in. I think that there were
some senators and House members who have a sincere philosophical
difference with the idea of any government role in boosting
demand in the economy. They don’t believe in Keynes and they’re
still fighting FDR. And no matter what we did, said, whatever
the process was, they just don’t agree that this is the best
prescription. And I think we can disagree without being
disagreeable on that front.
I also think that there was a decision made that was
political and tactical on their part where they said, you know
what, if we can enforce conformity among our ranks then it will
invigorate our base and will potentially give us some political
advantage, either short term or long term. And whether that’s a
smart strategy, I think you should ask them.
The last point I would make, though, is that given the
urgency of the situation right now, my consistent goal
throughout this process is: Are we getting the most immediate,
most effective relief possible to American families who are
losing their jobs, losing their homes, losing their health
care? I welcome Republican participation in that process, but
ultimately I’m answerable to the American people. And my
determination was to get it done, and I think that we’re going
to get it done.
Q Just to follow up -- well, I was going to ask, do you
think you let it hang out there too long, getting attacked and
let the House -- there was this effort to split you and the
House, and Republicans are saying, oh, Obama is not really for
this. Did you leave that out there too long to create a -
THE PRESIDENT: Look, I mean, the fact of the matter is, is
that once a decision was made by the Republican leadership to
have a party-line vote -- a decision that I think occurred
before I met with them -- then I’m not sure that there was a
whole host of things that we were going to do that was going to
make a difference. But again, my bottom line was not how pretty
the process was; my bottom line was am I getting help to people
who need it.
Going forward, each and every time we’ve got an initiative
I’m going to go to both Democrats and Republicans and I’m going
to say, here’s my best argument for why we need to do this. I
want to listen to your counter-arguments; if you’ve got better
ideas, present them. We will incorporate them into any plans
that we make, and we are willing to compromise on certain issues
that are important to one side or the other in order to get
stuff done. There are 535 members of Congress; they’re not
potted plants. Their job is to represent their constituents and
they’ve got ideas, too. So I’m not interested in bulldozing
them. On the other hand, I’m answerable to the American people
in an emergency economy. And what I won’t do is to engage in
Washington tit-for-tat politics and spend a lot of time worrying
about those games to the detriment of getting programs in place
that are going to help people.
Q Mr. President, you got no votes in the House on the
stimulus package and only a tiny number of Republicans in the
Senate. Is there any way to say that the Republicans made a
good-faith effort to function in a bipartisan way on the
stimulus package?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, look, as I said, I don’t want to
question the sincerity of some of the Republicans who opposed
this plan. They just may have a different theory about how the
economy works. Now, I have to say that given that they were
running the show for a pretty long time prior to me getting
there and that their theory was tested pretty thoroughly and
it’s landed us in the situation where we’ve got over a trillion
dollars’ worth of debt and the biggest economic crisis since the
Great Depression, I think I have a better argument in terms of
economic thinking.
But, again, I don’t question their sincerity. I do think
that over time, as we keep on reaching out, and as I think the
American people express their view that we need to start
actually doing something about jobs, housing, health care,
education, and so forth, that there will be some counterveiling
pressures to work in a more constructive way.
Q Do you think -- I’ll just close, maybe, this subject
-has this experience changed your expectation of what you might
be able to achieve in terms of Republican support, or the way
you will seek it? Has it changed what you think is possible?
THE PRESIDENT: You know, I am an eternal optimist and -that
doesn’t mean I’m a sap -- (laughter) -- so my goal is to
assume the best, but prepare for a whole range of different
possibilities in terms of how Congress reacts.
Keep in mind, I do think that because we had to lead with a
recovery package that touched on sort of a -- one of the core
differences between Democrats and Republicans, this particular
debate may have exaggerated some of these issues. And when we
start talking about how we’re going to manage the budget, or
when we start talking about how we’re going to approach
entitlements, or when we start talking about foreign policy,
that there’s going to be greater flexibility. But we’ll have to
see.
Q Mr. President, you had to give up quite a bit to
really -- in order to try to make a deal with the Republicans.
What would you like to restore first?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, look, first of all, let’s get this
package passed. I think it’s a great start. And -- well, if
you think about the number of jobs that are going to be created,
the amount of progress that we can make on, let’s say energy,
for example, where we are doubling alternative fuels, where we
are going to be retrofitting buildings to make them energy-
efficient, where we’re providing a whole host of incentives to
start innovation in new technologies; if you look at what we’re
going to be doing on education and teacher training and
encouraging new approaches; when you look at what we’re doing on
health care, where we do have money now to do what every expert
says, Republican and Democrat, says we should have done 10 years
ago or 15 years ago, and get everybody’s medical records in
digital form; when you think about the roads and the bridges
that are going to be repaired -- there is a lot of stuff in
there that I think is going to be very helpful. And that’s
before you start talking about the immediate relief provided to
families that are hurting.
Now, I think that some of the changes that were made were
-you can argue either way at the margins. I think that there
were some legitimate concerns about programs that were initially
in the House bill that I actually support as policy, but were
not designed to boost the economy. I will say that that
accounted for between one and two percent of the overall
package. And this is an example of where -- somebody was asking
me about sincerity -- I think that from a purely political
tactical point of view, I understand why somebody would gin up
the National Mall or family planning. From a practical point of
view, that was not remotely close to being the core of the
bill.
I do think that we probably could have done more on the
education innovation front. I think we could have done more
with some of the health care reforms that would lower costs. I
think that if you ask governors, Republican and Democrat, around
the country, about their budgets, they would argue that cuts in
help to the states is going to put them in a very bad bind,
particularly if the economy does not turn around fairly soon.
So those are all issues where again, I might have designed it a
little bit differently, but ultimately this is a framework that
is going to create between 3 and 4 million jobs. And that was
my bottom line. I think we’re going to get some good
investments and I think it’s an enormous accomplishment.
Q I wanted to ask a quick question. You often -- on
Monday night, for example, you talked about the catastrophe that
could happen -- of course we don’t know for sure what will work
-- what does catastro0phe look like?
THE PRESIDENT: I don’t have a crystal ball, and I don’t
think anybody does, but I think that you can imagine very easily
a scenario in which we duplicate what happened in Japan in the
‘90s, where we paper over core problems in the banking system.
Despite some efforts at stimulus, we never fully get private
credit flowing again, and the economy contracts severely and
then sort of limps along for a very long period of time.
Keep in mind, though, that even in that scenario, Japan had
an awful lot of foreign currency reserves, they had a surplus
from a positive trade balance. And the United States was
pulling a world economy along. In this situation you’ve got all
the economies around the world, even including China,
decelerating at a fairly rapid rate. So if what happened in
Japan is duplicated here in the United States, there’s nobody
else to help drive the engine of growth, you could end up seeing
an even more protracted and prolonged worldwide contraction.
And I think that would have a severe impact on our quality of
life.
Q Could I ask you on that, the reaction -- put aside
Wall Street’s reaction to Secretary Geithner’s plan, and lots
of, to use your phrase, economists left and right said that they
were, A, concerned that there weren’t enough details there and
why did you put it out then, but, B, substantively, that it may
not go far enough and that there may be -- in order to avoid
Japan you might have to do Sweden -- could you talk about -
THE PRESIDENT: Let me, first of all, emphasize that the
recovery package was critical to help families right now.
Unemployment insurance extensions, health care through a COBRA
that’s affordable, some immediate job creation -- those are very
important. That’s only one leg of the stool. As I said in my
press conference, the second leg of the stool is getting credit
flowing again. And what the first round of TARP accomplished
was to avert potential -- I hate to use the word again, but
potential catastrophe in the banking system. I mean, things
could have melted down much worse. Because of a lack of
clarity, consistency, transparency, what you didn’t see was a
market rebound and credit moving the way it needs to. So the
credit markets still are not functioning the way they should.
Now, this is a hard problem, and that’s why I said, I think
on Nightline the day that Tim Geithner spoke, there are certain
market participants who think that there’s some painless, quick
fix here. There isn’t. Because what happened was that you had
banks making bets, leveraging $30 off of one dollar of subprime
assets; that was duplicated throughout the system, and
deleveraging, sort of working through all those bad debts is
going to be really tough.
Now, we started talking about this, by the way, in
transition as well, and so along parallel tracks, even as we
were working on getting the recovery package done, we were also
talking about how do we get credit flowing to home owners; how
do we make sure that we’re getting small businesses the
resources they need; how do we make sure the banks trust each
other in terms of lending, and even blue-chip companies are able
to shed corporate debt, so they can make payroll and keep people
working.
And as you pointed out, sort of along the spectrum there
are two ways of handling this. There’s the Japan model -- as I
said, they sort of papered things over, never really bit the
bullet, took their medicine, and so you never got credit flowing
the way it should have and the bad assets in their system just
corroded the economy for a long period of time
Sweden, in contrast, took over their banks and took out the
bad assets and then resold the good banks, the fixed banks to
private hands. And they were up and running pretty soon. And as
I said when I was asked about this the other day, you can make a
good argument for the Swedish model, except for this fact: They
only had a handful of banks. We’ve got thousands of banks. The
scale, the magnitude of what we’re dealing with is much bigger.
We’ve got global financial markets that are reacting in all
sorts of unpredictable ways. And so what we have to do is to we
have to pull the Band-Aid off so we don’t duplicate what
happened in Japan. But we’ve also got to make sure that in
pulling the Band-Aid off we don’t just start doing so much
damage that things end up getting much, much worse. Finding
that sweet spot is what we’ve been working on for the last
several weeks and what Tim Geithner is going to continue to be
working on over the next weeks, months, probably through the
end of this year.
Q So are you saying that -- do you foresee a point where
it would be necessary to follow the Swedish model and have the
government take over some of these banks? Or is that -- are you
ruling that out as impractical -- even at a point down the road?
THE PRESIDENT: My absolute goal is to make sure that our
financial system is set and that we get credit flowing again,
that homeowners, small businesses and large businesses will get
-- invest and create jobs and get this economy going again. I’m
going to be very practical in terms of how to approach it. What
we want to do is to make sure that we get this right on the
front end. What Tim Geithner did was to provide a framework.
He is presenting then a timeline of how this is going to roll
out over the next several months: When do we start applying
these stress tests to the banks; opening up their books; making
sure that everybody knows for sure exactly what’s going on in
there; structuring plans to attract private capital to help deal
with some of these weaker institutions. Some of the smaller
institutions that don’t pose systemic risks, if it turns out
that they’re in really, really bad shape, then we may have to
reevaluate how we approach some of those institutions.
He’s also working the Federal Reserve Bank and the FDIC to
open up lines of credit that immediately provide some relief to
small businesses and consumers. There are a whole bunch of
credit markets, like student loans or credit cards, that are
locked up right now, but actually the underlying assets in these
securitized markets are not that bad, so we may just have to use
a variety of different tools to give private investors some
confidence on that front.
But here’s the bottom line: We will do what works. It is
going to take time to lay out every aspect of this plan and
there are going to be certain aspects of any plan that was
designed which will require reevaluation and then have some
experimentation -- if that doesn’t work then you do something
else. What I’m confident about is that the basic framework that
we have put forward is the right one, and that it balances a
whole host of issues, including, by the way, the issue of making
sure the taxpayers aren’t just carrying the whole freight on
this thing, and that we’re sharing -- that institutions on Wall
Street are sharing the burden of cleaning up this mess.
We want to help because -- not because I’m particularly
happy about how Wall Street has been running its businesses, but
because if we don’t fix the banking system and the credit
markets, then businesses can’t make payroll and we continue to
see pain among ordinary Americans. On the other hand, I think
that folks on Wall Street have to understand that these burdens
have to be shared, and so restrictions on executive
compensation, transparency, making sure that shareholders are
more effectively involved, all those things we’re taking into
account. And by the way, the market is not always going to like
some of those decisions, because ideally what they’d like to do,
they’d like to continue business as usual and not pay a price
for a whole bunch of really big mistakes that were made.
Q Just to follow up, if I hear you correctly you are
saying that you could reach a point where you have to go further
in terms of the government. If what you’re doing now doesn’t
work -
THE PRESIDENT: I think what you can say is I will not
allow our financial system to collapse. And we are going to do
whatever is required to get credit flowing again so that
companies and consumers can do their business and we can get
this economy back on track.
Q Mr. President, if I could ask you about
infrastructure, You’ve got infrastructure spending in the
stimulus package. The need is much faster than that and the
money is tight. Do you anticipate any significant further
additions in federal infrastructure spending in the reasonably
near future, and are you making plans to establish an
infrastructure bank?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, number one, we’ve got the
transportation reauthorization bill that’s going to be coming
up. So one thing to keep some perspective about on the recovery
package is this is supposed to provide a jolt to the economy
above and beyond what we’re doing already in the federal
budget. And so I expect that Secretary LaHood, working with the
various transportation committees are going to be moving forward
on a transportation bill. I would like to see some long-term
reforms in how transportation dollars flow, and I’ll give you
just a couple of examples. I think right now we don’t do a lot
of effective planning at the regional level when it comes to
transportation. That’s hugely inefficient. Not only does it
probably consume more money in terms of getting projects done,
but it also ends up creating traffic patterns, for example, that
are really hugely wasteful when it comes to energy use.
If we can start building in more incentives for more
effective planning at the local level, that’s not just good
transportation policy, it’s good energy policy. So we’ll be
working with transportation committees to see if we can move in
that direction.
The idea of an infrastructure bank I think makes sense -
the idea that we get engineers, and not just elected officials,
involved in thinking about and planning how we’re spending these
dollars. I may get some objections from my colleagues, Democrat
and Republican, on the Hill about that, but I think there should
be some way for us to -- just think how can we rationalize the
process to get the most bang for the buck, because the needs are
massive and we can’t do everything, and if it’s estimated that
just on infrastructure alone it would cost a couple trillion
dollars to get our roads, bridges, sewer systems, et cetera, up
to snuff, and we know we’re not going to have that money, then
it would be nice if we said here are the 10 most important
projects and let’s do those first, instead of maybe doing the 10
least important projects but the ones that have the most
political pull.
Q Can you do that without an infrastructure bank?
THE PRESIDENT: I think that an infrastructure bank is
important potential tool for getting that done. As I said,
there’s probably going to be some resistance that doesn’t fall
along partisan lines, but rather has to do with legislators
being understandably protective about their ability to influence
these decisions.
Q Mr. President, when you see the market plunge, if you
will, after Tim Geithner’s announcement, or after congressional
action this week, this makes the public like me nervous. What
do you tell them? You are famous for keeping your cool through
times of negative turns and all, and radiating confidence. What
do you tell people about market reactions?
THE PRESIDENT: What I tell them is, is that the market has
been volatile and will be volatile for a while because there’s a
lot of uncertainty out there, but I am not planning based on a
one-day market reaction. In fact, you can argue that a lot of
the problems we’re in have to do with everybody planning based
on one-day market reactions, or three-month market reactions,
and as a consequence, nobody was taking the long view. My job
is to help the country take the long view, to make sure that not
only are we getting out of this immediate fix but we’re not
repeating the same cycle of bubble and bust over and over and
over again; that we’re not having the same energy conversation
30 years from now that we had 30 years ago; that we’re not
talking about the state of our schools in the exact same ways we
were talking about them in the 1980s; and that at some point we
say, you know what, if we’re spending more money per capita on
health care than any nation on Earth, then you’d think everybody
would have coverage and we would see lower costs for average
consumers and we’d have better outcomes.
So my goal is to say let’s use this crisis as an
opportunity to think long term, and let’s see this as a wake-up
call to make America more competitive.
The one other thing I’d say to people, though, is we’ve
been through tougher times before. I mean, in some ways, part
of this is generational. I think that -- you know, I’m 47-48 -getting
older by the day -- getting older by the day -(
laughter) -
MR. GIBBS: You’re going on 68 -- (laughter.)
THE PRESIDENT: So I’m 48 years old. The last very bad
recession we had in ‘81-‘82 I was still in college. So for a
huge number of people out there, they’re just not accustomed to
seeing a bad economy with really high unemployment and very
bearish markets. But you know what, we went through this in the
‘80s, and that was combined with unbelievable inflation. In the
‘70s, right after the oil shots, we had an economy that was
limping along, and I don’t have to tell you what happened in the
‘30s -- what we’re going through now is nothing compared to what
our grandparents went through during the Great Depression.
So I think that we have to take it seriously and I’m
constantly trying to thread the needle between making sure
people understand this is really serious and we’ve got to take
some drastic action, but also letting people know we’ve been
through tougher times, America is incredibly resilient. We have
-- I forget who had the quote -- and I don’t even know the exact
quote, but to paraphrase, basically we always wait until we’re
in absolute crisis and then somehow we figure out a way to get
the political process working to yank ourselves out of it. It
would be nice if we had a political system that could anticipate
these things and deal with them in a more regular fashion.
Q Is part of that balance between, look, this is
serious, but not wanting to scare people to death -- what -everyday
Americans, what should they do? I don’t think they
know what to do. George Bush said go out and shop.
THE PRESIDENT: Here’s what I think people have to do.
think people have to continue to have confidence that the same
productive capacity that we had before is still there; our kids
still need to go to school and still need to buy computers and
still need to eat; people still need to drive cars and still
need to get to their jobs. There was over-building in the
housing market, much like -- there’s sort of a parallel to what
was happening in the financial markets, but housing prices have
fallen to the point where you’re going to start seeing, starting
some places quicker, but some places later, that existing
inventory absorbed. New young families are coming online and
they’re going to need places to live. And over time as the
population grows you’re going to start seeing housing prices
stabilize. So -
Q What creative ways -- I mean, things that haven’t been
thought of yet that can be done -- for example, you’ve got GIs
coming home from overseas; you’ve got empty houses in Florida
with weeds growing up in the driveway. Is anybody thinking
outside the box?
THE PRESIDENT: Absolutely we’re thinking outside the box.
This is where the political debate is joined, and I’m going to
keep on making the case that government action in these
circumstances is entirely appropriate and not at all
inconsistent with the primacy of the free market and
capitalism. I have no interest in expanding government,
contrary to what some critics might say -
Q -- quote of the day.
THE PRESIDENT: I don’t. I have an interest in fixing the
problem. In fact, keep in mind that one of the exercises that
I’m going through right now is how do we set up a long-term
budget that is sustainable.
I inherited a trillion-dollar-plus budget. That’s a
structural budget that was engineered by some of the very
critics of this package. Now, I would love nothing more than to
be able to walk into the presidency, roll up my sleeves and just
start paring away at that budget because everything had been
taken care of. We didn’t have deteriorating infrastructure.
Families had health care at affordable prices. The schools were
working and we had enough teachers, and the banks were fat and
happy and lending money and people had jobs, and we didn’t have
two wars going on. And then I could -- I would say, you know
what, give me just one of these problem, I’ll take them.
Unfortunately, what they handed off was all of these problems
simultaneously.
So what we’re going to do is to work with anybody who wants
to work with us constructively to solve the short-term problem
of putting people back to work, and the recovery package was
part of that. We’re going to get a financial system that gets
credit flowing again. We’re going to put forward some
regulatory architecture that ensures that we don’t see these
kinds of systemic risks again. We are going to put forward a
housing plan as part of the overall financial approach that
we’re taking that just provides some immediate relief to people
who are on the brink of losing their homes but have been doing
everything right. And some of this is going to cost money short
term and we are going to try to pull off the hat trick of, at
the same time, starting to chip away at our enormous long-term
budget deficit.
Q Can I ask you then, talk a little about your
priorities for the rest of the year and whether the large cost
of this -- what you’ve got to invest in this stimulus package
changes your view about whether you can move forward on some of
them, particularly your health care plan, which does have a
substantial cost.
MR. GIBBS: This will be the last one so we can -
Q Can I ask one more after -- thanks.
THE PRESIDENT: My priorities for the rest of the year.
Number one is to get the right structure for the successor to
TARP; spending the $300-some billion that has already been
authorised as wisely as possible, and injecting transparency and
trust into the financial system. Having a housing program that
provides relief to people who are at risk of losing their
homes. Financial regulations that ensure that the crisis
doesn’t happen again. A innovative and aggressive push for
health care reform that focuses not just on access but also on
costs, and trying to just provide relief to working families.
And a push for an energy policy that puts us on a path to
sustainability.
You asked given what we inherited, are we going to be able
to get all this done. Some of these reforms don’t cost money.
They will still be heavy political lifts because there are
philosophical arguments about how to approach it. Some of these
problems are very complicated. Health care is a classic
situation where it may cost money on the front end and save
enormous money on the back end and what we’re going to have to
figure out is what can we do now to start getting that ball
rolling, because the longer we put that off, the worse off we
are financially. Medicare and Medicaid on their current
trajectory cannot be sustained. And the only way I think we’re
going to fix it is if we see those two problems in the broader
contest of bending the curve down on health care inflation.
The problem is not just demographics. Peter Orszag, before
he joined us, loved to make this presentation -- you sat through
the chart -- that, yes, people are getting older, but that’s not
the problem. The problem is health care costs going up 6, 7, 8,
10 percent a year.
Now, those are the things that need to get done. I should
add one more thing and that is a budget process that starts
bending the deficit curve down. Some of these -- I think that
all these goals are complementary. I also think that the
American people understand we won’t get everything done
overnight. The U.S. government and the U.S. economy are
enormous ocean liners, they’re not speedboats. So what we will
do this year is to try to get them on the right trajectory and
hopefully that means at the end of my term you’ll look back and
you’ll say we’re at a different place than we would have been
had we not made these changes.
The one message I want to send to the American people is
that on all these fronts my consistent bottom line is how do we
make sure that the American people can work, have a decent
income, look after their kids, and we can grow the economy.
That’s my criteria. I don’t have an ideological agenda in how
we’re approaching it.
My second message is to Congress: We can’t afford to get
bogged down in some of the bad habits that have accumulated
during the process over the last several years.
Q I wonder -- you speak more about history I think than
most politicians, maybe even than most presidents. And you’ve
also been talking a lot about Lincoln. But you seem to put
yourself in historical context a lot. And so sort of in a way, I
just want to ask, when you think about this, how much do you
think you make history or history makes you, or how much do you
think Lincoln made history or history made him?
THE PRESIDENT: That was a profoundly abstract and
philosophical question that you asked.
Q Which you talk about all the time, I believe.
(Laughter.)
MR. GIBBS: Got a couple more hours on the flight -(
laughter.)
THE PRESIDENT: Look, I think that there are certain
moments in history where big change is possible. It’s not a
certainty, but it’s possible -- at certain inflection points.
And I think that those changes can be for the good, or they can
be for the ill. And leadership at those moments can help
determine which direction that wave of change goes. I think
it’s very hard to -- for any single individual or politician to
unleash historical momentum on its own. But I think when that
historical wave is there, I think you can help guide it.
Q Good answer.
Q Are we in one of those moments?
THE PRESIDENT: Yes.
Q Yes.
THE PRESIDENT: I firmly believe that.
Q We are in one of those moments?
THE PRESIDENT: I think we are -- which is part of what
makes it scary sometimes, but is also what should make people
determined and excited because I think that we can really solve
some problems that have been there for a long time and we just
couldn’t get the collective focus to tackle them. Now may be
one of those moments where we can.
All right, guys. Thank you.
END 6:00 P.M. EST
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