A Suggested Presidential Speech

Fellow Americans,

You can't have tax cuts during wartime. That was a fundamental mistake we are still paying for. We should have removed the tax cuts long ago, to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the party in power then wanted to believe that the wars would somehow pay for themselves, and that tax cuts would somehow stimulate economic growth that would pay for everything.

But the real world doesn't work that way. If what they said was true, we would have no recession now. But we do. Unfortunately, the party that believed in wars with tax cuts still believes in wars with tax cuts. Despite the reality of the recession that confronts us, they believe in continuing the policies that brought us to this crisis. Even now they threaten our international standing for the sake of continuing these failed policies.

Yes, we need to confront the deficits created by past administrations. But we don't have to do that by eliminating the supports to our own elderly, disabled, orphaned, jobless and impoverished. What we need to do is end the tax cuts, loopholes, subsidies and supports which have not helped us and will not help us. We can do this, and we must do this, for the sake of our great nation.

We must also address unemployment. Our nation once faced a Great Depression, and we worked our way out of that. Instead of continuing failed policies, let us follow the policies which have been successful before. It is unconscionable that our nation would both withhold unemployment support and withhold jobs that would provide support. I pledge to you that a top priority of my Administration will be to counter unemployment with all legal means available to me.

I ask you to join with me now, by insisting that Congress stop playing politics and start working with me on real-world solutions to the problems that face us.

Thank you, and may God bless America.