Reporting from Washington — On a day when the nation's gross domestic product suffered its worst slide in three decades, President Obama ordered the creation of a task force on the middle class and signed executive orders aimed at strengthening labor unions.
"This isn't just an economic concept," Obama said of the 3.8% decline in the GDP in the last quarter of 2008. "This is a continuing disaster for America's families."
"The recession is deepening, and the urgency of our economic crisis is growing," Obama said in an address in the East Room of the White House, part of a series of addresses on the economy this week. "Every day it seems there is another round of layoffs, and another round of families' lives turned upside down."
In signing orders aimed at protecting access to federal contracts for companies with labor unions and informing workers of their rights to organize, the president said, "I also believe that we have to reverse some of the policies" toward organized labor.
"I don't see organized labor as part of the problem," Obama said. "To me, it's part of the solution."
Citing record unemployment claims as well as the overall economic decline, he said, "This is a difficult moment. But I believe ... if we act swiftly ... it can be an American moment."
Obama, describing what is happening in the nation's economy as "the American dream in reverse," also used this stage as a forum for promoting the $800-billion-plus economic stimulus plan that the House approved in the measure's first vote this week. The Senate, expected to expand on the plan, will vote next.
"They need us to pass the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan," Obama said, promising that it will create jobs "for years to come," rebuild crumbling roads, renovate schools, double the nation's capacity for alternative energy generation and "bring healthcare into the 21st century.
"I'm pleased that the House has acted. ... I'm hoping we can strengthen it further in the Senate," Obama said. "What we can't do is drag our feet."
The president, in creating a "White House Task Force on Middle Class Working Families" with several Cabinet members included, has assigned Vice President Joe Biden to lead it. "He has never forgotten his roots as a working class kid from Scranton," the president said with Biden by his side.
