The crack team of HeyMikey investigators, recently picked up on waivers from Rupert Murdoch, has succeeded in hacking into the White House computers and retrieving the text of a speech President Obama plans to deliver next week.
The gist: "I was wrong. Here's what I'm going to do differently." In this speech the President not only lays out a bold new stimulus plan, but also an aggressive mechanism to push the Republicans in Congress to pass it.
The draft of President Obama's speech for next week:
"In 2009 I and my economic team believed unemployment would exceed 8% without the stimulus package we proposed. We believed the stimulus we passed was enough to keep unemployment below 8%. But here in 2011 unemployment is still over 9% and shows no sign of improving significantly for a number of years.
"Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, both winners of the Nobel prize in economics, say we need to spend a lot more now, and worry about cutting spending and raising taxes later, after the economy recovers.
"If I had listened to Dr. Krugman in 2009, we'd be in better shape now.
"Better late than never. I am sending to Congress a bill to authorize $2 trillion in stimulus spending, the bulk of it dedicated to rebuilding our deteriorating infrastructure and installing new green energy infrastructure. A corresponding increase in the debt ceiling is, of course, included in the bill. These will be good jobs that cannot be outsourced.
"This bill also indexes tax rates...
"...also indexes tax rates to GDP growth. Thus, when the economy grows, we will pay down our national debt, which will soon exceed $14 trillion, automatically, without paralyzing battles in Congress.
"I realize this bill has essentially no chance of becoming law with the GOP in control of the House and able to sustain filibusters in the Senate. Therefore I am putting Congress on notice that, effective immediately, I am invoking the coinage powers granted to the Executive under United States Code Title 31, Section 5112(k), pursuant to which I have instructed the Secretary of the Treasury to begin minting a new $50 billion coin at the rate of one per week. These coins will be deposited in the Treasury's account at the Federal Reserve. If this continues for a year, that will mean a total of $2.6 trillion in new money, which will balance the budget for the current year and begin to pay down our debt.
"This course of action will also cause significant inflation if it continues for more than a few weeks or a few months. Thus I will stop minting these coins if Congress passes the new stimulus and tax package I am proposing.
"But I want to be clear--though inflation would bring its own set of serious economic problems, they would be less dire than the stagnation and unemployment we now face.
"The choice is up to the Republicans who have the votes to prevent any action in Congress. Your only excuse for doing so is your supposed concern for the debt. I will now take away that excuse at the rate of $50 billion a week, until you act.
"If you fail to act until next November, you can explain that failure to the American people at the polls.
"I regret that I have not taken this action sooner. I pledge to the American people that my next errors will be of too much vigor, rather than of too much caution. As President Franklin Roosevelt said in the midst of the Great Depression:
'Governments can err, Presidents do make mistakes, but the immortal Dante tells us that divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted in different scales. Better the occasional faults of a Government that lives in a spirit of charity than the constant omission of a Government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.'
"May we all take inspiration from his example, and strive to be a worthy legacy.
"Thank you for listening, and for the sacred trust you have placed in me. May God help me to do my duty, and may God bless the United States of America."