WASHINGTON — Economic prosperity depends on building a stronger foundation and recapturing the “spirit of innovation,” President Barack Obama says. “Innovation has been essential to our prosperity in the past, and it will be essential to our prosperity in the future,” Obama said Saturday in his weekly radio and Internet address.
The president cited a Commerce Department report Friday showing that in the past few months, the economy overall has done “measurably better than expected.” He credited his $787 billion economic-stimulus program for much of that progress.
“This and the other difficult but important steps that we have taken over the last six months have helped put the brakes on this recession,” Obama said. He mentioned his administration’s efforts to limit home foreclosures and unlock frozen credit markets to encourage lending to people and businesses, along with the mixture of tax cuts and spending included in the stimulus program. Obama reminded the nation that full recovery will not happen overnight but rather will take many more months. The Associated Press
