It will not help speculators who took risky bets on a rising market and bought homes not to live in but to sell. And it will not reward folks who bought homes they knew from the beginning they would never be able to afford.

This plan will not save every home. But it will give millions of families resigned to financial ruin a chance to rebuild. It will prevent the worst consequences of this crisis from wreaking even greater havoc on the economy. And by…

We will make it possible for an estimated four million to five million currently ineligible homeowners who received their mortgages through Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac to refinance their mortgages at a lower rate.

Jim, the Head of Caterpillar said that if Congress passes our plan, this company will be able to rehire some of the folks who were just laid off. And that's a story I'm confident will be repeated at companies across the country.

The road to recovery will not be straight. We will make progress, and there may be some slippage along the way. It will demand courage and discipline.

I am absolutely convinced that you cannot solve the problem of Afghanistan, the Taliban, the spread of extremism in that region solely through military means. We're going to have to use diplomacy. We're going to have to use development.

We know that, if we do not act, a bad situation will become dramatically worse. Crisis could turn into catastrophe for families and businesses across the country.

We must stem the spread of foreclosures and falling home values for all Americans and do everything we can to help responsible homeowners stay in their homes.

Today does mark the beginning of the end; the beginning of what we need to do to create jobs for Americans scrambling in the wake of layoffs; the beginning of what we need to do to provide relief for families worried that they won't be…

I don't want to pretend that today marks the end of our economic problems, nor does it constitute all of what we're going to have to do to turn our economy around. But today does mark the beginning of the end.

We have begun the essential work of keeping the American dream alive in our time. And that's why we're here today.