Obama Speech at Department of Energy: “The Time for Talk is Over. The Time for Action is Now.”

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Highlight from the transcript The White House – Blog Post – Serious about energy independence

As we are meeting, in the halls of Congress just down the street from here, there’s a debate going on about the plan I’ve proposed, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan.

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Now, I believe that legislation of such magnitude deserves the scrutiny that’s it received over the last month. But these numbers that we’re seeing are sending an unmistakable message – and so are the American people. The time for talk is over. The time for action is now. Because we know that if we don’t act, a bad situation will become dramatically worse. Crisis could turn into catastrophe for families and businesses across our country.

I refuse to let that happen. We can’t delay and we can’t go back to the same worn ideas that led us here in the first place. In the last few days, we’ve seen proposals arise from some in Congress that you may not have read, but would be very familiar to you. They’re rooted in the idea that tax cuts alone can solve our problems. That half-measures and tinkering are somehow enough. That we can afford to ignore our most fundamental economic challenges – the crushing cost of health care, the inadequate state of so many schools, and our dangerous dependence on foreign oil.

Let me be perfectly clear: those ideas have been tested, and they have failed. They have taken us from surpluses to an annual deficit of over a trillion dollars, and they have brought our economy to a halt. And that’s precisely what the election we just had was all about. The American people have rendered their judgment. Now is the time to move forward, not back. Now is the time for action.