Before I begin, I want to say a word about the terrible tragedy that took place outside Buffalo last night. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and friends who have lost loved ones, and as always, our thanks go out to the brave first responders who arrived immediately to try and save lives, and who are still on the scene keeping people safe.

Tragic events such as these remind us of the fragility of life and the value of every single day. And one person who understood that well was Beverly Eckert, who was on that flight and who I met with just a few days ago. Beverly lost her husband on 9/11, and became a tireless advocate for the families whose lives were forever changed on that September day. In keeping with that passionate commitment, she was on her way to Buffalo to mark what would have been her husband’s birthday and launch a scholarship in his memory. She was an inspiration to me and to so many others, and I pray that her family finds peace and comfort in the hard days ahead.

Thank you all so much for being here today, and welcome to the White House. Every President since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has sought the advice of the Business Council. Every President since Lyndon Johnson has sought your audience. And while this is a partnership is important during periods of relative peace and prosperity, it is essential during tough economic times.

I don’t need to tell you the challenges we face today. Each of you and every American sees them every day. We’ve lost 3.6 million jobs since this recession began and nearly 600,000 just last month. Many of your businesses are under tremendous pressure, with revenues falling and credit drying up. You are feeling directly or indirectly the reverberations of a financial crisis which has upended this economy.

But I’m not here to repeat a litany of our challenges. We know they are vast and they are varied. I’m here to enlist your help. We have a once in a generation chance to act boldly, turn adversity into opportunity, and use this crisis as a chance to transform our economy for the 21st century.

That is the driving purpose of the Recovery and Reinvestment Plan I’ve put before Congress – a plan that will ignite spending by businesses and consumers, make the investments necessary for lasting economic growth and prosperity, and save or create more than 3.5 million jobs over the next two years. And 90 percent of these jobs are in the private sector.

We had a spirited debate about this plan over the last few weeks. Not everyone shared the same view of how we should move forward, and at times, our discussion was contentious. But that’s a good thing. Diverse viewpoints are the lifeblood of a democracy, and debating them is how we learn from each other’s perspectives.

But as we meet, Congress is poised to act. And one reason we’ve come so far is because so many of you have recognized the urgency and necessity of taking action. This plan has won the support of groups as varied as the Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the AFL-CIO.

The goal at the heart of this plan is to create jobs. Not just any jobs, but jobs doing the work America needs done: repairing our infrastructure, modernizing our schools and hospitals, and promoting the clean, alternative energy sources that will help us finally declare independence from foreign oil.

It’s a plan that will put people to work building wind turbines, solar panels and fuel efficient cars.

We’ll upgrade our schools, creating 21st century classrooms, libraries, and labs for millions of children across America;

We’ll computerize our health care system to save billions of dollars and countless lives.

We’ll lay down broadband internet lines to connect rural schools and small businesses, so they can compete with their counterparts anywhere in the world, and we’ll rebuild our crumbling roads and bridges, and repair our dangerously deficient dams and levees so we don’t face another Katrina.

In addition to saving and creating jobs, we’ll also ensure that folks who’ve lost jobs through no fault of their own can receive greater unemployment benefits and continue their health care coverage. This plan will provide badly-needed middle class tax relief, putting money back in the pockets of workers and their families. And it will also provide sensible tax relief to businesses that are trying to make payroll and create jobs.

Passing this plan is a critical step. But as important as it is, it’s only the beginning of what we must do to turn our economy around. To truly address this economic crisis, we need to address the crisis in our financial sector to get credit flowing again to families and businesses. We need to confront the crisis in the housing sector, that has been at the root of our economic challenges, and I’ll be discussing that soon. We need comprehensive financial reform in the way government relates to the financial markets in order to deal with the complex challenges of the 21st century – both as a way to restore trust and ensure that a crisis like this can never happen again.

Finally, we have to approach our budget in a responsible way. We have to invest in the short-term to get our economy moving again, but we also need long-term fiscal discipline. That means investing in priorities like energy, health care, and education that will grow our economy again, while at the same time eliminating those programs that are wasteful, duplicative, or that we simply can’t afford. We have to once again live within our means, instead of leaving debt for future generations.

It will take all of these steps to not only lead an economic recovery, but to lead a long-term path to economic prosperity.

This work will not be easy. Our recovery will likely be measured in years, not months. And all of us – government, business, labor, and citizens – will have responsibilities to meet. I will be looking to you for your ideas and innovations, for your help not only crafting the policies of the 21st century, but crafting a government for the 21st century. Your best practices should be our best practices.

And as we consider the work ahead, we’d all be well served by reflecting on the significance of the partnership that we see here today: how it was forged and why it has been so fruitful.

Back in the spring of 1933, in the early days of a new administration, President Roosevelt’s Commerce Secretary gathered in Washington the leaders of some of the nation’s largest corporations, many of which continue to be represented in this room.

These executives, hailing from General Electric, General Motors, AT&T, DuPont, and others, formed an advisory panel to assist in crafting the New Deal policies that in the coming years would transform the American economy amidst brutal and unyielding Depression. The work of these volunteers would inform the inception and implementation of the Securities and Exchange Act, the Banking Act, the Social Security Act, and other policies that have served us ever since.

This was how the Business Council was born. It was at a moment when economic turmoil threatened the foundations on which our society was painstakingly built – a moment in history when other nations were giving up, as President Roosevelt said, “[selling] their heritage of freedom for the illusion of a living. �

But not us. We adapted. We changed. We boldly defended our system of free enterprise as we enacted policies to transform the ways that it would function. We did not give in to ideologies that dismissed or derided the role of government – nor those that denied the role of the marketplace.

And so even as our President was leading unprecedented public interventions into the private sector, he did so always in concert with the private sector’s leaders. Even as government built new regulatory structures and weaved a social safety net, these efforts were designed not to confine private industry, but to allow it to once again succeed while ensuring that success was broadly shared.

President Roosevelt understood the new role of government in this new world – that while extraordinary actions on its part might be the source of recovery, no action on the part of government, no matter how extraordinary, would alone be the source of our prosperity.

And these corporate citizens understood their new role as well – that we all had responsibilities to fulfill. That our survival depended on how well we worked together. That in a more interdependent economy, our fates were – and are – more interconnected.

Our growth – our success as a nation – ultimately depends upon what we do together. The government can lay the groundwork for an economy in which innovation is prized and hard work rewarded, in which rules are clear and clearly enforced. The rest is up to people like you and the people who work for you.

That is how we have led the global economy. That is how we have ushered in massive gains in wealth not just for the few but for the many. That is how we have been – and will continue to be – a nation that draws on the talents of all our people. A place where generation after generation of bold thinkers and bright minds, innovators and inventors, have taken the chance to invest in an idea, to build a new product, to test a new theory, to do their small part to change our world.

That is our promise. And that promise must always be at the heart of our partnership.

So I hope this is the beginning of many conversations. My door is open to you. I am confident that if we are smart and if we are bold, if we work together, if we are willing to cast aside that which has already failed us, we can and will lead our nation through this transformative moment and come out stronger and more prosperous than ever before.

Thank you and God bless you.