Discurso de Obama

Num dia em que o presidente da Reserva Federal indicou que em 2009 o PIB dos EUA deverá cair entre 0,5% e 1,25% e a taxa de desemprego atingir 8,5% a 8,75% e se discutem cenários de nacionalização de parte substancial do sistema financeiro dos EUA, o Presidente Obama fez um discurso extraordinário, em que naturalmente as respostas à crise ocuparam uma parte importante mas em que apresenta uma visão estratégia de longo prazo notável centrada em três eixos: energias renováveis, saúde e educação. Mas em que para mim sobressaiu a preocupação com a estabilidade das contas do Estado: "With the deficit we inherited, the cost of the crisis we face, and the long-term challenges we must meet, it has never been more important to ensure that as our economy recovers, we do what it takes to bring this deficit down." apresentando as bases de um programa de cortes na despesa "Yesterday, I held a fiscal summit where I pledged to cut the deficit in half by the end of my first term in office. My administration has also begun to go line by line through the federal budget in order to eliminate wasteful and ineffective programs. As you can imagine, this is a process that will take some time. But we’re starting with the biggest lines. We have already identified two trillion dollars in savings over the next decade. 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. We will root out the waste, fraud, and abuse in our Medicare program that doesn’t make our seniors any healthier" e reafirmando as propostas eleitorais de aumento dos impostos "we will restore a sense of fairness and balance to our tax code by finally ending the tax breaks for corporations that ship our jobs overseas. In order to save our children from a future of debt, we will also end the tax breaks for the wealthiest 2% of Americans".