Rescue, Recovery, and Reining in Deficits

I delivered a speech today at New York University about the Administration’s efforts to jumpstart the economy and to build a secure and prosperous recovery by putting the nation on a path to fiscal sustainability — issues that are especially important to the students of today and generations to come. 

 

The Administration currently projects roughly $9 trillion in deficits over the next decade, an amount due in full to the failure to pay for policies in the past, the cost of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, and the steps we had to take to combat it.  That is why we are right now tackling the key driver of our long-run deficits, the rising rate of health care cost growth, and are committed to paying for the costs of health reform in full.  It’s also why the Administration is currently considering a range of proposals to bring deficits down to a fiscally sustainable level of roughly 3 percent of GDP, and to cut the deficit we inherited in half by the end of the President’s first term.