Barack Obama

I urge all of us not to make the perfect the enemy of the absolutely necessary.

I believe that legislation of this enormous magnitude, that by necessity we are moving quickly. We are not moving quickly because we are trying to jam something down people's throats, we're moving quickly because we're told that if we…

This is not my assessment. This is not Nancy Pelosi's assessment. This is the assessment of the best economists in the country.

If we do not move swiftly to sign the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act into law, an economy that is already in crisis will be faced with catastrophe.

If they don't act now to pass a stimulus plan the result will be catastrophe.

We all need to take responsibility. And this includes executives at major financial firms who turned to the American people hat in hand when they were in trouble even as they paid themselves customary lavish bonuses.

A failure to act and act now will turn crisis into a catastrophe. And guarantee a longer recession, a less robust recovery, and a more uncertain future.

We're going to close down Guantanamo but we're going to take up to a year to figure out how to do this safely and protect ourselves from terrorism.

We don't disparage wealth. We don't begrudge anybody for achieving success. And we certainly believe that success should be rewarded. But what gets people upset, and rightfully so, are executives being rewarded for failure.

A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe and guarantee a longer recession, a less robust recovery, and a more uncertain future.

I reject those theories. And so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change.

Anderson, good to see you. How you been?

The Recovery and Reinvestment Act that we've put forward will provide billions of dollars to build schools and help with school construction.

I think that, if you look at -- first of all, I think, to -- in fairness to the House Democrats -- and this hasn't been talked about enough -- if you tally up all the programs that have been criticized on A.C. 360 or anywhere else, that…

The only measure of my success as president when people look back five years from now or nine years from now is going to be, did I get this economy fixed?

We have got to have a recovery package that puts people back to work and ensures that states that are dealing with rising unemployment can deal with unemployment insurance.

We have to remain vigilant. The threats are still out there.

The recovery and reinvestment act that we put forward will provide billions of dollars to build schools and help with construction.

I think that the American people understand something has to be done. They want to make sure that we're serious about it and that we're not using this to promote politics as usual.

I think there are mechanisms in place to make sure that institutions that are taking taxpayer money are not using that money for executive compensation.

I think this was a mistake. I think I screwed up. And I take responsibility for it.

I campaigned on changing Washington and bottom-up politics. And I don't want to send the message to the American people that there are two sets of standards; one for powerful people and one for ordinary folks who are working every day and…

What I won't do is, in some cases, some of the criticism has suggested that the better approach would be to do exactly what we did over the last eight years that got us into this problem in the first place.

Right now I'm learning an awful lot about the economy. I'm not a trained economist, but I'm spending a lot of time thinking about that so that I can make the very best decisions possible for the American people.

You know, what I want to do is make sure that I'm constantly talking about al Qaeda and other affiliated organizations because we, I believe, can win over moderate Muslims to recognize that that kind of destruction and nihilism ultimately…