THE
PRESIDENT: Hello, everybody. Good morning, everybody. Let me begin by pointing out that although Washington is supposed to be a town of sharp elbows, it’s getting a little carried away. For those of you who are worried about my lip, I should be okay. The doctor has given me a clean bill of health, and I will continue to be playing basketball whenever I get a chance. In fact, I played yesterday with Sasha and Malia and they took it easy on me because they were feeling pity.
I hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving, but now it’s time to get back to work. Congress is back in town this week. And I’m looking forward to sitting down with Republican leaders tomorrow to discuss many issues -- foremost（最重要的） among them the American people’s business that remains to be done this year. My hope is that tomorrow’s meeting will mark a first step towards a new and productive working relationship. Because we now have a shared responsibility to deliver for the American people on the issues that define not only these times but our future -- and I hope we can do that in a cooperative and serious way.
Our two most fundamental challenges are keeping the American people safe and growing our economy -- and it’s in that spirit that I look forward to sitting down tomorrow and talking about urgent matters like the ratification（批准，承认） of the New START treaty, which is so essential to our safety and security; and the status of the Bush-era tax cuts that are set to expire（期满） at the end of this year. And this is just one of the many economic issues we’ve got to tackle together in the months ahead.
As I said a few weeks ago, the most important contest of our time is not the contest between Democrats and Republicans; it’s between America and our economic competitors all around the world. Winning that contest means that we’ve got to ensure our children are the best educated in the world; that our research and development is second to none; and that we lead the globe in renewable energy and technological innovation.
It also means making sure that in the future we’re not dragged down（向下拖） by long-term debt. This is a challenge that both parties have a responsibility to address -- to get federal spending under control and bring down the deficits that have been growing for most of the last decade.
Now, there’s no doubt that if we want to bring down our deficits, it’s critical to keep growing our economy. More importantly, there’s still a lot of pain out there, and we can’t afford to take any steps that might derail（出轨） our recovery or our efforts to put Americans back to work and to make Main Street whole again. So we can’t put the brakes on too quickly. And I’m going to be interested in hearing ideas from my Republican colleagues, as well as Democrats, about how we continue to grow the economy and how we put people back to work.
But we do have to correct our long-term fiscal（会计的，财政的） course. And that’s why earlier this year I created a bipartisan（两党连立的） deficit commission that is poised to report back later this week with ideas that I hope will spark a serious and long-overdue conversation in this town. Those of us who have been charged to lead will have to confront some very difficult decisions, cutting spending we don’t need in order to invest in the things that we do.
As President, I’m committed to doing my part. From the earliest days of my administration, we’ve worked to eliminate wasteful spending and streamline（使合理化） government. I promised to go through the budget line by line to eliminate programs that have outlived（经受住） their usefulness, and in each of the budgets I’ve put forward so far, we’ve proposed approximately $20 billion in savings through shrinking or ending more than 120 such programs.
I’ve also set goals for this government that we’re on track to meet: reducing improper payments by $50 billion, saving $40 billion in contracting, and selling off $8 billion of unneeded federal land and buildings.
