Obama: Economy Headed In "Right Direction"

THE PRESIDENT: Good afternoon, everybody. I'd like to say a few words about the state of our economy, and what we're doing to put Americans back to work and build a new foundation for growth. Last week, we received a report on America's Gross Domestic Product -- a key measure of our economic's [sic] health -- and it showed marked improvement over the last few months. This morning, we received additional signs that the worst may be behind us. Though we lost 247,000 jobs in July, that was nearly 200,000 fewer jobs lost than in June, and far fewer than the nearly 700,000 jobs a month that we were losing at the beginning of the year. Today we're pointed in the right direction. We're losing jobs at less than half the rate we were when I took office. We've pulled the financial system back from the brink, and a rising market is restoring value to those 401(k)s that are the foundation of a secure retirement. We've enabled families to reduce the payments on their mortgages, making their homes more affordable and reducing the number of foreclosures. We helped revive the credit markets and opened up loans for families and small businesses. While we've rescued our economy from catastrophe, we've also begun to build a new foundation for growth. That's why we passed an unprecedented Recovery Act less than a month after I took office -- and did so without any of the earmarks or pork-barrel spending that's so common in Washington. Now, there's a lot of misinformation about the Recovery Act. So let me repeat what it is and what it is not. The plan is divided into three parts. One-third of the money is for tax relief that's going directly to families and small businesses. For Americans struggling to pay rising bills with shrinking wages, we've kept a campaign promise to put a middle class tax cut in the pocket of 95 percent of working families -- a tax cut that began showing up in paychecks about four months ago. We also cut taxes for small businesses on the investments they make, and substantially increased loans through ...