Most of Roosevelt's innovations have been the law of the land for 70 years now and yet we are still a free society free enough that is to allow tens of thousands of protesters to gather on the National Mall and to broadcast their slogans and speeches to the world via C-SPAN.
But on second thought after I decreed the state of emergency I came to the conclusion that that was impossible to achieve without bloodshed because the street protesters were full of anger and nearly out of control. This is why I thought we needed to find another way out.
It's time to look beyond the budget ax to assure access to health care for all. It's time to look for bipartisan solutions to the problems we can tackle today and to work together for tomorrow - building a health care system that works for all Americans.