Obama then:
Issues are never simple. One thing I’m proud of is that very rarely will you hear me simplify the issues.
Mr. Obama’s recent courtship of Republicans gave way to blunt derision of their ideas for the stimulus, as he tried to raise the political pressure to pass a measure with a price tag of over $900 billion in the Senate.
Republican proposals are “rooted in the idea that tax cuts alone can solve all our problems, that government doesn’t have a role to play, that half measures and tinkering are somehow enough, that we can afford to ignore our most fundamental economic challenges,” the president said in an address at the Department of Energy Thursday. “Those ideas have been tested, and they have failed.”
(The “Obama then” statement is from page 92 of Pocket Obama.)