Here are the 18 times Obama used the words “invest” or “investment” to refer to government spending during his March 24 press conference. (The quotes are from the transcript of the press conference that CNN posted on Tuesday night.)
1. We invest in the renewable sources of energy that will lead to new jobs, new businesses and less dependence on foreign oil.
2. 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.
3. We invest in reform that will bring down the cost of health care for families, businesses and our government.
4. 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.
5. We’ve got to make some tough budgetary choices. 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.
6. 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.
7. We've got to invest in education, K through 12 and beyond, to upgrade the skills of the American worker so we can compete in--in the international economy.
8. Here's what I do know: 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.
9 & 10. 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.
11. 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, at the same time we're still reducing the deficit by a couple of trillion dollars, we are cutting out wasteful spending in areas like Medicare, we're changing procurement practices when it comes to the Pentagon budget, we are looking at social service programs and education programs that don't work and eliminate them.
12. But it is going to be an impossible task for us to balance our budget if we're not taking on rising health care costs, and 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.
13. Look, I'm not going to lie to you. It is tough. As I said, that's why the critics tend to criticize, but they don't offer an alternative budget. Because even if we were not doing health care, we were not doing energy, we were not doing education, they'd still have a whole bunch of problems in those out-years, according to CBO projections. The only difference is that we will not have invested in what's necessary to make this economy grow.
14. And so what we've said is, look, let's invest in health information technologies.
15. Let's invest in preventive care.
16. Let's invest in mechanisms that look at who's doing a better job controlling costs while producing good quality outcomes in various states and let's reimburse on the basis of improved quality, as opposed to simply how many procedures you're doing. Let's do a whole host of things, some of which cost money on the front end, but offer the prospect of reducing costs on the back end.
17. Now, the alternative is to stand pat and to simply say, "We are just going to not invest in health care."
18. And that's why the recovery package said, as a first priority, how are we going to save or create 3.5 million jobs? How can we prevent layoffs for teachers and police officers? How can we make sure that we are investing in the infrastructure for the future that can put people back to work right away?
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released an analysis of Obama’s budget proposal, concluding that it would result in an increase in the national debt that is unprecedented in the post-World War II era.
Posts
