Remarks by the President at a DNC Event

Sheraton Downtown Hotel, Orlando, Florida

6:03 P.M. EDT

        THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you.  (Applause.)  Thank you very much.  Well, it is good to be in Orlando!  (Applause.)  It's good to be back in Florida.  Some perfect Florida weather out there.  (Applause.)  To everybody who's watching, come on down to Florida.  It's gorgeous.  (Applause.)

        We've got a couple of special people I want to acknowledge. First of all, your outstanding mayor, Buddy Dyer, is in the house.  (Applause.) Wonderful Congresswoman Corrine Brown.  (Applause.)  I want to thank CeCe Teneal for the outstanding performance.  (Applause.)  And I want to thank Allen Ginsberg and Mark NeJame for their wonderful hard work to make this thing happen.  Thank you very much, everybody.  (Applause.)

        AUDIENCE MEMBER:  We love you!

        THE PRESIDENT:  I love you back.  (Applause.)  I do.  Although I have to say that backstage I had the chance to see Dwight Howard -- (applause) -- and Dwight is a great friend, and I told him I'm a little heartbroken that the NBA season is getting delayed here.  (Laughter.)  So I'm hoping those guys are back on the court soon.  In the meantime, I'm here because I need all of your help.  I need your help.  (Applause.)

        I've come here because we've got to finish what we started in 2008.  (Applause.)  A lot of you got involved in that campaign back in 2008, and let's just remember, because sometimes there's revisionist history and everybody says, well, that was such a smooth campaign and -- (laughter) -- and I say, that's not exactly how I remembered it.  (Laughter.)  

        We campaigned in 2008 not because we thought it was going to be a cakewalk.  I mean, after all, you had a candidate named Barack Hussein Obama, so you knew that wasn’t going to be -- (laughter) -- you didn’t need a poll to tell you that that was going to be an uphill battle.  (Laughter.)  But we forged ahead because we had an idea about what the country was, what it is, what it can be.  

        Many of you -- your parents, your grandparents -- grew up with a faith in an America where hard work and responsibility paid off; where if you stepped up and you did your job and you were loyal to your company and looked after your community, that loyalty, that responsibility would be rewarded with a decent salary and good benefits, maybe a raise once in a while, and you could raise your family and send your child to college and retire with some dignity and some respect.  

        But over the last decade, that faith was shaken.  Rules changed.  The deck kept being stacked against middle-class Americans.  And nobody in Washington seemed to be listening, seemed to be willing or able to do anything about it.  And in 2007, all of this culminated in the worst economic crisis in our lifetimes -- a crisis that's been much worse than your average recession.  And it's been especially tough here in Florida.  

        And from the time I took office, we knew that because this crisis had been building up for year, it wasn’t going to be solved overnight.  It would take years for us to fully recover.  But we understood that if we took some steps to start rebuilding the economy from the bottom up, that there was no doubt that America could be stronger, could be more fair and could be more just.

        So the question now, in 2011, is not whether people are still hurting.  Of course they are.  Every night I get emails and letters from folks from all across the country, and some of the stories are heartbreaking.  And I meet folks in VFW halls and diners, and men and women who tell me about having to close down a business that's been in their family for generations, or people who are having to cross items off the grocery list just so they can fill up the gas tank, or parents who have to put off retirement to make sure their kids can stay in college.  So the question is not whether this country has been going through tough times.  The question is, where are we going next?  

        AUDIENCE:  Yes!

        THE PRESIDENT:  What does the future hold?  We can either go back to the ideas that tried and failed in the last decade.

        AUDIENCE:  No!

        THE PRESIDENT:  Where corporations write their own rules, and the well-connected get tax breaks slipped into the tax code, and ordinary folks are struggling.  Or we can build the America that we talked about in 2008, and that we’ve been fighting for ever since -- an America where everybody gets a fair shake, and everybody does their fair share.  (Applause.)  An America where we’re all in it together.  An America where we’re all in it together and we’re looking out for one another.  That’s what this election is about.  And that’s what we’ve been fighting for since I got to Washington.  

        Think about what we’ve been through over the last three years.  When we wanted to save the auto industry from bankruptcy, there were a whole lot of Republicans in Congress who said that’s a waste of time, waste of money.  They fought us tooth and nail. But you know what, we did it anyway.  And we saved hundreds of thousands of American jobs.  We made sure taxpayers got their money back.  (Applause.)

        And because we acted, the American auto industry is stronger.  Ford recently announced its plans to add 12,000 new jobs in its U.S. manufacturing plant over the next few years -- jobs making cars stamped with those three proud words:  Made in America.  So we’re working to get manufacturing back here in the United States.  We don't want to just import from other places; we want to sell to other places and make it right here with American workers.  (Applause.)

        When we wanted to pass Wall Street reform to make sure that a crisis like this never happens again and irresponsibility is not rewarded, we had lobbyists and special interests spend millions to make sure that we didn't succeed.  But you know what, Orlando?  We did it anyway.  (Applause.)  And we passed the toughest reforms in generations -- reforms that prevent consumers from getting ripped off by mortgage bankers or credit card companies.  And today, there are no more hidden credit card fees and no more unfair rate hikes and no more deception from banks.  I tell you, they fought us every inch of the way, but we got it done.  

        We were able to cut $60 billion in taxpayer subsidies to big banks and use the savings to make college more affordable for millions of young people out there.  Most Republicans voted against it, but it was the right thing to do and we did it anyway.  (Applause.)  To make sure that our young people have an opportunity.  

        And because of the efforts of so many of you, we did what we’ve been trying to do for a century, and we finally got it done -- we said that health care should no longer be a privilege in this country, it should be affordable and available to every single American.  (Applause.)  And we're in the process of implementing it right now.  (Applause.)

        So no longer can insurance companies drop your coverage for no good reason, or deny you coverage because of a preexisting condition.  And think about what that means for men, and especially for women.  Breast cancer, cervical cancer, no longer preexisting conditions.  (Applause.)  They now have -- insurance companies now have to cover things like mammograms and contraceptionist preventive care.  No more out-of-pocket costs.  (Applause.)

        And while it's going to take a couple of years for the reforms to fully take effect -- I see some young people here.  (Applause.)  We already have nearly 1 million more young adults with health insurance because of the Affordable Care Act -- 1 million young people have the security that's needed.  (Applause.)

        That's an incredible achievement.  Because of you, the Affordable Care Act is working.  It is working to make the American Dream a little more secure.  Because of you I signed into law my first bill making sure women earn equal pay for equal work.  (Applause.)  I want all our daughters to have the same chances that our sons -- (applause.)  And while we're at it, we appointed two brilliant women to the Supreme Court.  (Applause.) We repealed "don't ask, don't tell," because anybody should be able to serve their country that they love.  (Applause.)

        In the last few years, as promised, we removed 100,000 troops from Iraq, ended our combat mission there, just like we said we would do.  (Applause.)  We're now transitioning our forces out of Afghanistan.  We're taking the fight directly to  al Qaeda.  And because of the bravery of the men and women in uniform, Osama bin Laden will never again threaten the United States of America.  (Applause.)

        So we've made progress.  We've made progress making our country safer.  We've made progress making our people more secure.  But we've got a lot more work to do.  We've got so much more work to do to restore that sense of security that has always defined America.  Making sure that everybody has got opportunity. Making sure anybody can get in the middle class if they're willing to work.  And that's where I need your help.

        Today, the United States Senate is about to vote on the American Jobs Act.  Some of you might have heard about this.  (Applause.)  Everything in this bill is the kind of proposal that in the past has been supported by Democrats and Republicans.  Everything in this bill will be paid for.  It will put people back to work.  It will put more money in your pockets.  The Senate should pass that bill today.  (Applause.)

        Think about it.  We've got a million construction workers --millions of construction workers right now who are out of work.  When the housing bubble burst they got laid off.  This jobs bill says let's put those men and women back to work rebuilding our roads and our bridges and modernizing our schools.  I don't want the newest airports, the fastest railroads built in China.  I don't want the best schools built in Europe.  I want them built right here in the United States of America.  (Applause.)

        I don't want our kids studying in crumbling schools.  I want our kids studying in the best schools.  

        AUDIENCE:  Yes!

        THE PRESIDENT:  There's work to be done right here in Orlando.  There are workers ready to do it right here in Orlando. Let's tell Congress, pass this jobs bill today.  (Applause.)

        Pass this jobs bill and we put teachers back in the classroom.  (Applause.)  This week I'm going to have a state visit with one of our closest allies, the President of South Korea.  I had lunch with him a while back and I asked him, what's your biggest policy challenge.  He said, you know, my biggest problem is, is that our parents are so demanding.  (Laughter.)  He says, they know education is the key to our future, so I'm having to import teachers to teach kids English in the first grade because they know that they want to succeed education.  So they’re hiring teachers as fast as they can, and what are we doing?  We’re laying them off in droves.  It’s unfair to our kids.  It undermines our future.  If we pass this jobs bill, thousands of teachers in every state will be back in the classroom where they belong.  (Applause.)

        If Congress passes this jobs bill, companies will get tax credits for hiring America’s veterans.  We ask those men and women -- our family, our friends -- to leave their careers, leave their families, risk their lives to fight for our country.  The last thing they should have to do is fight for a job when they come home.  (Applause.)

        The American Jobs Act will cut taxes for almost every worker and small business in America; give an extra tax cut to every small business that hires workers or give workers a raise.  You’ve got Republicans in Congress who keep on talking about, “we’ve got to help job creators.”  Don't just talk about it -- actually do something.  Pass this jobs bill.  (Applause.)  And every single one of those job creators will have more money to hire.

        Now, a lot of folks in Congress, they’ll tell you, well, we may support some of those ideas but it’s got to be paid for.  Well, I agree.  It does have to be paid for.  We have a deficit, and we’ve got to tackle it in a serious way.  So, recently, I laid out exactly how we should pay for it -- pay this debt down over time, and pay for the jobs bill.  It’s a plan that adds to the $1 trillion in cuts that we already made during the summer, one of the biggest spending cuts in history.  

        When people talk about we need to shrink the deficit -- we just made some tough cuts.  And we’re willing to do more.  But we can’t just cut our way out of the problem; we’ve also got to grow our way out of the problem.  We’ve got to invest in those things that help us grow and put people back to work.  

        And our plan says if we want to close our deficit and put people back to work, then we’ve got to do it in a balanced way and a fair way.  It means that, yes, we’ve got to make some tough choices, make some tough priorities, get rid of programs that don’t work so we can fund the ones that do.  But we’ve also got to ask those who’ve been most blessed by America -- the wealthiest, biggest corporations -- we’ve got to ask them to also do their fair share.  (Applause.)

        We’ve got a tax code that’s all messed up and we need to reform it.  Now, Republicans say they want to reform it, too. That’s great.  We’re happy to work with them, but it’s got to be based on a very simple principle:  Middle-class families shouldn't pay higher rates than millionaires or billionaires.  (Applause.)  Warren Buffett’s secretary shouldn't pay a higher rate than Warren Buffett.  (Applause.)  A teacher, or a nurse, or a construction worker making $50,000 a year shouldn't be paying a higher rate than somebody making $50 million a year.  (Applause.) It’s not right, and it’s got to change.

        Now, I want to be very clear here.  Nobody wants to punish success in America.  The Republicans talk about class warfare.  That’s -- our goal is to make success available for everybody.  What’s great about this country is you’ve got a good idea, you’ve got a service that nobody else has thought of, you know what, go out there, start a business.  (Applause.)  Make money.  I want everybody out there to be rich.  That’s great.  Anybody in America should be able to make it if they try.  (Applause.)  

        But none of us make it on our own.  Somebody -- an outstanding entrepreneur like a Steve Jobs -- somewhere along the line he had a teacher who helped inspire him.  (Applause.)  All those great Internet businesses wouldn’t have succeeded unless somebody had invested in the government research that helped to create the Internet.  We don't succeed on our own.  We succeed because this country has, in previous generations, made investments that allow all of us to succeed.  (Applause.)

        So this is the land of opportunity.  But we have to remember -- those of us who have done well, we should all pay our fair share in taxes to contribute to the nation that makes our success possible.  (Applause.)  That’s not class warfare.  That’s not an attack on anybody.  That’s just common sense.  That’s just fairness.

        So when you hear Congress dusting off those old talking points and calling this class warfare -- I just have to remind people, 26 years ago another President said that closing tax loopholes that benefited special interests, the most affluent, he said these tax codes that made it possible for a millionaire to pay nothing while a bus driver was paying 10 percent of his salary, that’s just crazy.  It’s time we stopped it.  You know who said that?  That was Ronald Reagan.  (Applause.)  That was Ronald Reagan.  

        So I don't understand what these other folks are arguing about.  They all say that Ronald Reagan is their guy.  (Laughter.)  I’m agreeing with him.  I know they’ve got short memories, but I don't remember Republicans accusing him of engaging in class warfare.  He was expressing common sense.

        AUDIENCE MEMBER:  It's all right, Mr. President.  (Laughter.)  

        THE PRESIDENT:  So if asking somebody like me, who's done very well, to pay the same tax rate as a plumber or a teacher or a bus driver makes me a warrior for the middle class, I’ll wear that as a badge of honor.  I’ll wear that as a badge of honor.  (Applause.)  I don’t mind, because ultimately this is about priorities.  This is about choices.

        It would be great if we didn’t have to pay any taxes, nobody, and we could still have great roads and great bridges and great schools and high-speed rail.  (Applause.)  But you know what, if we want to put people back to work, if we’re not willing to just settle for the status quo, if we want to invest in the future, that money has got to come from somewhere.

        So would you rather keep tax loopholes for oil companies, or would you rather put construction workers and teachers back on the job?  (Applause.)  Would you rather keep tax breaks for folks who don’t need them and weren’t really even asking for them, or do you want to invest in education and medical research and new technology?  (Applause.)  Should we ask seniors to pay thousands of dollars more for Medicare, which is what some of the Republicans in the House have been proposing, or should we ask everybody to pay their fair share?  (Applause.)

        That’s what this debate is about and that’s what’s at stake right now.  This notion that the only thing we can do to restore prosperity is to eliminate government, keep tax breaks for the few, and tell the many that you’re on your own, that’s not how America got built.  That’s not how America got great.  That’s not the story of this country.

        We are rugged individualists, and we’re strong and we’re self-reliant.  And we believe in the principle that everybody who is able and willing should work -- everybody who is able should be working out there.  There’s no free lunch out here.  And it’s been the drive and the initiative of our workers and entrepreneurs that’s made this economy the engine and envy of the world.  And we believe in the free market and we believe in people going out there and pursuing their dreams.

        But there’s always been this other thread in our history that says we’re all connected, we’re in this together.  There are some things we can only do together as a nation.  We don’t have a system where we all rely on our own private services to put out fires.  We realize, you know what, it works better if we’ve got a single fire department.  We don’t decide that somehow each of us are going to have our own private army.  We decide, you know what, we should kind of pool our resources and make sure that this nation can defend itself.

        Republican Presidents like Lincoln and Eisenhower, even during difficult times, they invested in railroads and highways and science and technology.  And after the war -- after World War II, when there were millions of returning heroes, including my grandfather, this country together said we’re going to help these young people go back to college under the G.I. Bill, and that’s going to help lift everybody up.  Everybody will benefit from a better-educated workforce.  Everybody -- rich, poor, everybody in the middle will be lifted up if the country is doing better.  

        That’s why Michelle and I had the chance to succeed -- (applause) -- because our parents instilled in us a sense of what it meant to work hard, but also because the country gave us opportunities, scholarships so we could go to college.

        So no single individual built America on their own.  We built it together.  We’re one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all -- (applause) -- and with responsibilities to each other as well as to ourselves.  And right now, we’ve got to meet those responsibilities in this time of great challenge.  

        There's some folks in Congress who may think, well, you know what, we’ll just settle this all in next year’s election.  I’ve got news for them:  The next election is 13 months away.  The American people don’t want to sit and wait.  They need help now. (Applause.)  There are folks living paycheck to paycheck.  There are folks living week to week.  They need action.  They need action now.  (Applause.)

        So I need you to lift up your voices, help us out.  (Applause.)  Tell Congress:  Pass this bill.  And once we get this bill passed and we’re just going to stay on it.  And if they don’t vote for it today, we’re going to stay on it until they vote for something.  (Applause.)  We’re going to keep pushing.

        And I’m going to need you to help us finish what we started in 2008.  Let’s keep building an America that we can be assured gives everybody opportunity.  Everybody gets a fair shake.  Everybody gets their fair share.  

        AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Si, se puede!

        THE PRESIDENT:  Si, se puede!  (Applause.)  We’re not people who just sit there and watch things happen.  We make things happen.  We’re Americans.  We are tougher than the times we live in and we’re sure a lot better than the politics we’ve been seeing.  (Applause.)

        We’re a people who can write our own destiny.  And we can do it again, as long as all of you have that same sense of urgency we had in 2008.  Let’s meet this moment.  Let’s get to work.  Let’s remind everybody all around the world just why it is that the United States of America is the greatest country on Earth.

        God bless you.  God bless the United States of America.  Thank you.  (Applause.)

END 6:30 P.M. EDT

Statement by the President on the Senate Vote on the American Jobs Act

Tonight, a majority of United States Senators voted to advance the American Jobs Act.  But even though this bill contains the kind of proposals Republicans have supported in the past, their party obstructed the Senate from moving forward on this jobs bill. 

Tonight’s vote is by no means the end of this fight.  Independent economists have said that the American Jobs Act would grow the economy and lead to nearly two million jobs, which is why the majority of the American people support these bipartisan, common-sense proposals.  And we will now work with Senator Reid to make sure that the individual proposals in this jobs bill get a vote as soon as possible. 

In the coming days, Members of Congress will have to take a stand on whether they believe we should put teachers, construction workers, police officers and firefighters back on the job.  They’ll get a vote on whether they believe we should cut taxes for small business owners and middle-class Americans, or whether we should protect tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires.

With each vote, Members of Congress can either explain to their constituents why they’re against common-sense, bipartisan proposals to create jobs, or they can listen to the overwhelming majority of American people who are crying out for action.  Because with so many Americans out of work and so many families struggling, we can’t take “no” for an answer.  Ultimately, the American people won’t take “no” for an answer.  It’s time for Congress to meet their responsibility, put their party politics aside and take action on jobs right now.

Readout of President Obama's Call to Ambassador Adel al-Jubeir of Saudi Arabia

President Obama called Ambassador Adel al-Jubeir of Saudi Arabia today to express the solidarity of the United States and Saudi Arabia in the face of the disrupted plot to assassinate Ambassador al-Jubeir in the United States. President Obama underscored that the United States believes this plot to be a flagrant violation of U.S. and international law, and reiterated our commitment to meet our responsibilities to ensure the security of diplomats serving in our country. He also underscored the close partnership between the United States and Saudi Arabia.

The President also attended a meeting of his national security team this morning to thank them for their exceptional work in disrupting this plot, and coordinating closely among our law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

Remarks by the President in a Meeting with the President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness

IBEW Local #5 Training Center
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

12:03 P.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT: Well, let me just make a few remarks up front, and then really what I want to do is hear from all of you.

First of all, I had a chance to read the full report last night and I think it's outstanding. I think you guys did extraordinary work. Jeff, I want to thank you for your leadership on guiding this whole process. I think you have been steady and focused on how can we make sure that we're creating an economy that not only deals with the immediate problem of putting people back to work, but also how do we create a foundation for long-term opportunity for all people, and a growth agenda that is going to make sure that businesses are created here, that businesses stay here, and that they prosper here.

As I look at the introduction of the report, the quote that stands out, "We need a sense of urgency and a bias for action," is something that I think we all feel acutely. And the fact that you've been able to organize around five key steps that, I think, you'd be the first to acknowledge isn't all that needs to be done, but are key areas where we should be able to generate some strong bipartisan agreement and get action going quickly, I think makes it really extraordinary.

A couple of things I'll just remark on in terms of the general context. As you pointed out, I think at the beginning of this year, when we started the Jobs Council, I think all of us felt fairly confident that the economy could grow quickly enough that we could start bringing the unemployment rate down, even if it wasn't moving as quickly as we might like, but generally, the blue chip projections were somewhere between 3 and 4 percent growth.

We have had a very tough string of events over the course of the last 10 months. You had the Arab Spring, which shot up oil prices far higher than any of us anticipated. You've got the tsunami in Japan, which affected supply lines globally. You had, most prominently, the situation in Europe, which has created great uncertainty for businesses across the board. And then, unfortunately, Washington got involved in a self-inflicted wound with the debt ceiling fiasco. And all those things, I think, led to both consumers and businesses taking a big step backwards and saying, we are just not sure where this thing is going.

As a consequence, projections now in terms of growth are significantly lower than they were. And the situation in Europe, in particular, is one in which we're spending a lot of energy talking to our counterparts across the Atlantic, trying to make sure that they handle this in a way that stabilizes the economic situation in the coming months.

So we've had a string of events that have darkened the outlook, and that makes the action that -- the actions that are being recommended by the Jobs Council that much more important, because these are areas where we actually have control of the situation. We could do these things, and there's no doubt about the fact that it would have a significant, marked impact on job growth right now.

A couple of comments, and then what I want to do is I think hear directly from -- I think we've got some people who want to remark on each of various categories.

First of all, with respect to infrastructure, the council here is quoted as saying, "If there is one thing that Washington should be able to agree on, rebuilding our infrastructure should be one." I mean, when you've got the AFL and the Chamber of Commerce agreeing on anything, that's a sign that it's a good idea.

I think you document as well as anybody has the incredible opportunities at a time when contractors are begging for work, which means they're willing to come in on time, under budget. You've got millions of construction workers who've been laid off as a consequence of the housing bubble going bust who are ready to get on the job. You've got interest rates -- never been lower. And you've got this crying need, and as you point out in the report, this is a twofer -- this is one where we can not only get immediate job growth, but it also lays the foundation for long-term productivity and efficiencies that will make a difference for every company represented around this table.

So the American Jobs Act, the jobs plan that I've put forward before Congress, obviously has a very significant infrastructure component. It incorporates a lot of the ideas that were contained in this bill, because -- in the Jobs Council report -- because one of the things that you mentioned was not only do we need infrastructure, we have to streamline the approval process so that we can actually get these projects moving more quickly than they have in the past. And so we've already identified, Gene, is it 11 or 14?

MR. SPERLING: Fourteen.

THE PRESIDENT: We've already identified 14 high-priority projects in which the permitting process has been significantly expedited, and we're doing that through administrative action. Our goal is, if this serves as an effective model for us being able to move those 14 quickly, that we can then replicate that across the board and the significant investment that was made could have a much more rapid impact than what we've seen before.

With respect to the next area, which is support for small business and emphasizing high-growth firms, many of the recommendations that you gave we’ve already been trying to implement. We have a task force that, along with SelectUSA, has been looking at, for example, how can we move forward on easing the burdens and allowing IPOs to move more quickly. Are there regulatory constraints on small businesses as they move forward that we can start eliminating?

So where we can act administratively, we’ve tried to do so. In some areas we might require some additional legislation. For example, on the high-skill immigration area, that’s not something that we can necessarily do on our own. We can expedite some of the visas that are already in place and try to streamline that process to make it move faster. We may need some legislative help on that area.

With respect to the National Investment Initiative, I know that we’ve -- if I’m not mistaken, some of the Job Council already had a chance to meet with the Secretary of State to figure out how we can deal with visas and travel promotion. There are other areas where we think that bringing together an interagency approach and making sure that we are knocking down any barriers that are out there for direct investment here in the United States and job creation that we’re going to prioritize those. And I welcome the ideas that have already been put in place.
 
With respect to a regulatory review, as you know, we are already in the process of a look-back that has identified billions of dollars in potential savings, eliminating paperwork. But we want to pursue some of the additional ideas that have been put forward. And, obviously, with respect to skills and improving the capacity of our workforce to get the jobs of the future, that’s something that spans both our Education Department as well as our Department of Labor. And I know that Hilda, Arne Duncan, and others are working aggressively on trying to implement many of the ideas that you’ve put forward.

So I guess the bottom line is this. Jeff, as you pointed out, some of the recommendations contained in the Job Council require legislative action. And these days, things don’t move as quickly through Congress as we would like. But there are certain ideas that are contained in this Jobs Council report that historically have received bipartisan support. And the election is 14 months away or 13 months away. We can’t wait until another election before we start acting on some of the ideas.

The American Jobs Act that I’m putting forward obviously contains many ideas like infrastructure investment that should be pretty straightforward. And our hope is that we are able to get those passed in the next couple of months. But we’re not going to wait for Congress. So my instruction to Jeff and Gene and Valerie and all the advisors who are sitting around the table is scour this report, identify all those areas in which we can act administratively without additional congressional authorization, and just get it done.

And we’ve already been able to get a significant number of your recommendations implemented, but we want to do more. And we will have a very big risk follow-up process to make sure that anything that’s within our authority to do as an administration we start doing immediately and we don’t wait for Congress, because the American people can’t afford to wait. They need help right now.

THE PRESIDENT: Just a couple of comments. I think that, after reading your report, the financial reforms that took place in Sarbanes-Oxley and the Spitzer declaration I think need to be examined. This is always a little bit tricky. This is one of the challenges of a decentralized system of our founders and then the fact that the SEC, for example, is an independent agency.

So one of the questions I've had, John, Steve, Sheryl, is have we begun to engage with both the relevant congressional committees, but also, in this case, the SEC, the relevant agency, to see how we can get those carve-outs that you've described. But because this makes sense to me -- if you’ve got smaller companies, they are not going to have the legal and accounting help at the costs -- at the magnitude that a GE is going to have if it decides it wants to go into the capital markets, and trying to figure out how to balance, making sure that they don't get themselves into trouble but that they're also not priced out of the market is critical.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, Gene, I would say, having not only the NEC but also Treasury engaged with you guys immediately in trying to get a sense of what tweaks to Sarbanes-Oxley, for example, might be required, starting to speak to the relevant committee chairmen, seeing how this might be structured. The more granular and specific we can get, the more quickly we might be able to get something done on this.

THE PRESIDENT: The only comment I'd make right now is that the proposal we have in the American Jobs Act would pull forward $50 billion in infrastructure investment. This is investment we're going to have to make anyway. So we can do it now, we can do it later -- now is the time to do it.

I don't know how Congress will respond to the overall package, but our expectation is, is if they don't pass the whole package we're going to break it up into constituent parts. And having the relevant businesses get behind a effort to move this infrastructure agenda forward is a priority.

Now, the one thing I want to emphasize is that we took very seriously this notion that citing and delay is a problem. And again, we've already identified 14 high-profile, high-impact projects where we are streamlining our ability to get this thing done. I think the last time we were here, Matt, you mentioned this specifically, and I think we've been trying to pursue it.

So my instructions to my agencies are, within the constraints of making sure that people are safe and we're not wasting taxpayer money on these projects, let's do them as quick as we can. But we're going to need a push I think from the business community in particular in order to get this across the finish line.

And I would just make one last point. The Recovery Act had a infrastructure component, and at the time, a lot of folks said that, well, it's going to be very hard to spend out this money in an efficient, effective way. Eighty percent of the Recovery Act funds targeted for surface transportation was spent out -- the projection was we would have only spent out 55 percent at this point. We spent out 80 percent of it. And if I'm not mistaken, and, Gene, you may have the figures on the tip of your fingers here -- but less than 1 percent of the overall funding indicated that there were any problems in terms of fraud or misallocation of resources, et cetera -- I mean, an extraordinarily low number. We were able to maintain high-quality control while spending this out in a very quick and effective way -- partly because there's so much need out there that it's not like we're having to hunt for a lot of projects that could be ready to go.

THE PRESIDENT: Robert, just to pick up on the structure of the infrastructure bank, and I'll try to illustrate my understanding of it. You have this financing authority. It says to a region that wants to build a new bridge, here's a loan; we understand that there is going to be a funding stream as a consequence of the loan we're providing. The regional authority is able to leverage additional private-sector dollars. They're also -- they've also identified an ongoing funding stream, whether it's a user fee or something. And as a consequence, what do you anticipate the -- for every dollar that's lent by the federal authority, what kind of private-sector money could you potentially --

COUNCIL MEMBER: So we looked at the AIFA, which is I think about $10 billion they set aside. And we believe it's scored that that $10 billion would equate to about $100 billion in subordinated debt; the debt would be subordinated at the project level.

THE PRESIDENT: So you're looking at 10-to-1.

THE PRESIDENT: Just a quick comment on this area. What we've seen, as I've been pushing our agencies and administration to take a hard look at this, is exactly what Mark just said, that in any area there's a whole bunch of underbrush that can be cleared out and made much more efficient, while still achieving the objectives of public health, welfare, environmental, and so forth.

And where I think the low-hanging fruit will be is those regulations that are just there on the books because nobody has really thought through, over the course of 10, 20, 30 years, is this still the smartest way for us to achieve our objective? And I think that you will get a very engaged and aggressive partner in this administration in identifying those areas where there's no dispute with respect to the goal but -- something is being done through paper as opposed to email, or we haven't adapted to new technologies, or the rule was written for an obsolete business model that doesn't really apply to today. On those areas, I think we're going to be able to move very rapidly.

What's tougher, and I suspect Matt is -- when you refer to sort of the systemic stuff -- is where there may be a genuine judgment call with respect to what are our objectives. So I can assure you that there are going to be certain industries where any costs imposed in order to prevent significant environmental degradation is viewed as a job-killer. And we're going to have to make a decision as a society, well, how much pollution exactly are you willing to tolerate for those jobs?

Because as I said in my speech before Congress, I don't think we're going to compete effectively internationally in terms of who's willing to have the dirtiest air -- because we'll always lose that fight. I mean, there are going to be countries out there that -- don't have any environmental standards, right? And so if how we're gauging where a particular regulation is smart or not, part of what we're trying to do is at least apply rigorous cost-benefit analysis. But there are going to be some cases where there is a genuine cost and businesses will say, you know what, we wish we didn't have these costs; on the other hand, the benefits in terms of a lot fewer people in the emergency rooms or with asthma or what have you may be sufficiently significant that, as a society, we say those are costs that we still have to bear.

So I just want to distinguish between those two aspects of regulation -- one I think which will be easier to move forward rapidly on; the other where there's going to be just some real judgment calls and there's a legitimate values debate that we're going to have to be having.

THE PRESIDENT: At least with respect to the executive agencies, every agency understands that -- because they’ve been in a lot of Cabinet meetings with me and I think that they will all echo it, those who are here -- that they have to be thinking about the economy and job creation as part of the lens through which they’ve evaluating the actions that they’re taking.

As you just pointed out, Brian, there are things that are nice to do, and then there are things that are urgent to do. And part of OIRA's task has been to evaluate any new regulatory proposals under a very rigorous lens. I mean, the one thing that we’ve been able to -- we can document that the hard benefits of regulations we’ve proposed relative to the costs are greater than we’ve seen in any recent administration by a factor of two or three. So the job is to evaluate this stuff very rigorously, make sure that we distinguish between what’s urgent and what would just be nice if the economy was humming along at 5 percent growth, keep jobs in mind and, as a consequence, I think we can make some significant progress on areas where, regardless of where you land across the political spectrum, you say to yourself, you know, this isn’t a smart regulation. And if it’s not smart, it shouldn't be done.

Having said that, I just -- the only reason I raise this is because I don't want to paper over the fact that once we make all the regulations smarter, eliminate the dumb ones and so forth, there is still going to be some tensions that exist around, well, how much do we value these extra 10,000 jobs versus these extra 100,000 asthma cases. And those are tough decisions that have to be made and have to be discussed both in Congress as well as within the administration.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, listen. I know we’re running out of time. Jeff, I just wanted -- again, thank you for your leadership. I want to thank everybody who’s participated. The quality of the product is outstanding. It’s focused; it’s specific. It’s not the usual white paper stuff that gets put in a drawer, as somebody mentioned earlier. And we are acting on it.

And to tie what you guys are doing with what Roger just said about the economy, there is no doubt that we still have some tough sledding before us. This was the worst crisis we’ve had in our lifetimes. I’m looking around the room -- I don't see too many folks who were around or active, at least, back in the '30s. And it is true that, historically at least, after financial crises the recessions are deeper, longer, more prolonged.

We still have some big challenges internationally. Europe is the most prominent and immediate challenge, but we’ve got some structural issues internationally in terms of imbalances. And part of it has to do with the fact that we had become the growth engine for the world based on accumulating debt and consumption. And that was not a sustainable path for us.

The good news is -- and it’s reflected in your Jobs Council report -- there’s just a bunch of stuff that we can do right now that not only helps the economy immediately but puts us on a more stable path over the long term. And most of it should not be controversial. The good new is, is that our problems are imminently solvable and does not necessarily fall into the classic ideological divisions between left and right, conservative, liberal, but are just smart things to do to respond to a historic challenge that we face as a country.

The bad news is that there is a big gap between sensible solutions and what either the political process seems to be willing to act on and also, I think, people’s perceptions, which are clouded by news reports that would make it seem as if there is nothing we can do and that we’re automatically on a downward decline.

And so I think what the Job Council has been invaluable in providing is a road map for the American people -- not comprehensive, this is just a piece of the puzzle, but pointing to examples of where, if we do some smart things now, we can have a lot better outcomes in the future. And that can help to build back a sense of confidence -- or a sense of confidence about our ability to meet these challenges.

So I just want to thank everybody for their leadership. And I’m looking forward to our next meeting. (Applause.)

END
1:20 P.M. EDT