Washington, February 01: US President Barack Obama on Saturday promised to rein the budgetary deficit and said the economy is now moving on the road to progress, even though it has a long way to go as unemployment continue to be very high.
“There are certain core principles our families and businesses follow when they sit down to do their own budgets … They don t spend what they don t have, and they make do with what they ve got,” Obama said in his weekly address to the nation.
“It’s now time to come together and make the painful choices we need to eliminate those deficits,” he said.
The US has forecast a record deficit of 1.5 trillion dollars for the full fiscal year of 2010.
Obama said that he was pleased that the Senate had just restored the pay-as-you-go law that was in place in the 1990s and helped the US government end that decade with a 236-billion-dollar surplus.
“Reinstating this law will help get us back on track, ensuring that every time we spend, we find somewhere else to cut,” he said adding he has also proposed a spending freeze.
Obama also said that the US economy has been on the path of recovery. “For the past six months, our economy has been growing again. And last quarter, it grew more quickly than at any time in the past six years.”
“But when so many people are still struggling when one in ten Americans still can’t find work, and millions more are working harder and longer for less our mission isn’t just to grow the economy,” he said adding that it is to grow jobs for folks who want them, and ensure wages are rising for those who have them.
The US economy grew at an annual rate of 5.7 per cent in the last quarter, which is said to be the fastest growth since the third quarter of 2003.
“Its not just about improvements we see in quarterly statistics, but ones people feel in their daily lives a bigger paycheck; more security; the ability to give your kids a decent shot in life and still have enough to retire one day yourself, he said.
—Agencies