Obama Speaks before Joint Session of Congress: Glimmer of Hope Amid Economic Crisis

"WE WILL RECOVER!"
"The time to take charge of our future is here"
Stimulus Plan:
Priorities: 3.5 Million New Jobs; Reduce Foreclosures
Focus on:
1. Energy: Clean, Renewable Energy
2. Healthcare: Cant afford to put it on hold. Time is now!
3. Education: Expand and Improve Early Education. College Affordable.
The Washington Post Reports:
President Obama plans to sound a note of hope at a time of crisis tonight, delivering to a joint session of Congress an address heavily focused on the ailing economy and how to fix it. Five weeks into a presidency already marked by dramatic highs and lows, Obama will tell the lawmakers and luminaries assembled in the House chamber that he sees light at the end of the tunnel, despite rising unemployment, a cratering stock market, teetering banks and an auto industry gasping for breath.
"But while our economy may be weakened and our confidence shaken; though we are living through difficult and uncertain times, tonight I want every American to know this: We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before," Obama will say, according to a preliminary excerpt released by the White House.
Obama will lay out his economic recovery plans and discuss the challenges of trying to pull the nation out of its worst recession in decades while setting a course of greater fiscal discipline, according to the White House. Obama is expected to flesh out the details of an economic strategy that some critics - and the markets - have tarred as too short on specifics to inspire confidence. A week after the president signed a $787 billion economic stimulus package, his administration is moving on separate fronts to shore up the housing market by stemming foreclosures and bolster the banking industry, possibly by purchasing shares of Citigroup and Bank of America.
After days of mostly negative news, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke offered a glimmer of optimism today by testifying that 2010 could be a "year of recovery." "The weight of this crisis will not determine the destiny of this nation. The answers to our problems don't lie beyond our reach," Obama will say, according to the excerpts.
"They exist in our laboratories and universities; in our fields and our factories; in the imaginations of our entrepreneurs and the pride of the hardest-working people on Earth. Those qualities that have made America the greatest force of progress and prosperity in human history we still possess in ample measure. What is required now is for this country to pull together, confront boldly the challenges we face, and take responsibility for our future once more."
But Obama will also distribute some blame for the economic crisis.
"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," he will say. "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."
Obama will reiterate his desire to cut the federal budget deficit in half by the end of his first term in office, saying his team has "begun to go line by line through the federal budget in order to eliminate wasteful and ineffective programs. ...
"In this budget, we will end education programs that don't work and end direct payments to large agribusinesses that don't need them. We'll eliminate the no-bid contracts that have wasted billions in Iraq, and reform our defense budget so that we're not paying for Cold War-era weapons systems we don't use."