President Obama to Business: "Now is the Time to Invest in America"

Posted by White House

The President walked across the park today to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce – a hub of big business that has supported the President on the Recovery Act and further infrastructure rebuilding while also giving voice to industries opposed to the health reform law – to deliver a stark message of shared responsibility for winning America’s future:

But I want to be clear: even as we make America the best place on earth to do business, businesses also have a responsibility to America.

As he laid out in his State of the Union Address, he will be focusing on the first half of that pact – by having government rebuild America’s infrastructure for communications and transport, by helping gear education toward equipping students for today’s businesses, and by streamlining regulations to make sure there’s aren’t unnecessary burdens on job creation – a mission elaborated on this morning by OIRA Administrator Cass Sunstein.

But as the President explained, businesses must look toward the greater good as well, and realize that a prosperous middle class is good for the bottom line:

So if I’ve got one message, my message is now is the time to invest in America. Now is the time to invest in America. (Applause.) Today, American companies have nearly $2 trillion sitting on their balance sheets. And I know that many of you have told me that you’re waiting for demand to rise before you get off the sidelines and expand, and that with millions of Americans out of work, demand has risen more slowly than any of us would like.

We’re in this together, but many of your own economists and salespeople are now forecasting a healthy increase in demand. So I just want to encourage you to get in the game. As part of the bipartisan tax deal we negotiated, with the support of the Chamber, businesses can immediately expense 100 percent of their capital investments. And as all of you know, it’s investments made now that will pay off as the economy rebounds. And as you hire, you know that more Americans working will mean more sales for your companies. It will mean more demand for your products and services. It will mean higher profits for your companies. We can create a virtuous circle.

What You Missed: Tuesday Talk on the Anniversary of the Open Government Directive

Posted by White House

On December 8th, 2009, the White House issued an unprecedented Open Government Directive requiring federal agencies to take steps to achieve key milestones in transparency, participation, and collaboration. On the one-year anniversary of the Directive, Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra, Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra and Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs Cass Sunstein answered your questions from Facebook and WhiteHouse.gov on the Administration’s progress and where we're going.

You can check out the full video of the chat or use the links below to jump directly to the questions you're interested in. Visit whitehouse.gov/open to learn more about the Open Government Initaitive.

Questions are paraphrased.

• Opening Remarks
• What types of data are now more easily available because of the directive?
• The number of data sets are only important if they are useful data sets. How many are being used by 3rd parties to create applications?
• How can Open Government initiatives be more effectively implemented in local governments?
• Even if government opens up and actually gives out information, what steps are being taken to inform the public?
• Are you going to publish any metrics on usage of Open.gov and Data.gov?
• This is fantastic! How do we advertise this initiative even further? What can citizens do?
• Can you talk about the ways that Administration Officials are engaged in two-way conversations with constituents?
• What steps might you take to institutionalize the principles of transparency and collaboration beyond the Obama Administration?