Obama to America: Tighten your belts

WASHINGTON – The president told the nation tonight the “day of reckoning has arrived” for Americans after a spree of extravagant buying, too-few regulations and not enough long-term financial planning.

Obama said he will submit a budget this week that he sees as a vision for America and a blueprint for the future.

He says the budget will reflect the harsh reality of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, one for which he was quick to blame his predecessor, Republican George W. Bush.

“While our economy may be weakened and our confidence shaken, though we are living through difficult and uncertain times, tonight I want every American to know this: We will rebuild, we will recover,” Obama said in his televised speech before a joint session of Congress with all the trappings of a State of the Union Address. “And the United States of America will emerge stronger than before.”

Five weeks after taking office, Obama pressed the case for his economic revival plans that includes a health-care system overhaul, new centralized education priorities and investment in alternative energy sources.

The markets remained skeptical. U.S. stocks plunged to a 12-year low yesterday, but the markets rallied on today on Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s assurances that the country’s troubled banks should be able to weather the downturn without being nationalized.

Obama said he has begun scrutinizing the budget and has identified $2 trillion in costs that can be cut over the next decade.

Obama, who will roll out his first budget proposal to Congress Thursday, has vowed to halve the federal deficit by the end of his term.

“My budget does not attempt to solve every problem or address every issue,” Obama said in the prepared remarks. “It reflects the stark reality of what we’ve inherited – a trillion dollar deficit, a financial crisis, and a costly recession.”

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a rising star in the Republican Party and a potential presidential candidate in 2012, entitled his rebuttal “Americans can do anything.”

Jindal insisted Republicans were ready to work with him on economic solutions but also tore into the president and Democrats who control Congress for passing legislation he said will not grow the economy but instead “saddle future generations with debt.”

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