Mr. President, the Second World War cost $288 billion; in today’s money, about $3.1 trillion.  According to Mr. Alan Greenspan, we have expended or committed about $7 trillion to address and resolve the credit crisis.  That is more than twice what was required to win WWII.  But even this investment will not be enough if the urgency of spending our money in the best possible way does not push aside all other tempting options.  We should not direct money towards failing companies that will never recover or to sectors of the economy that must be reformed before investments should be made.  Nor should we spend it on “shovel-ready” projects that will not make us better contributors to the economy.

So, if you are softhearted about all those who struggle in these hard economic times, please be hardheaded about how to best help them.

There is no greater sense of pride than that derived from setting and achieving challenging goals.  So far, I have not heard of any cogent plans for lifting the productive contribution of every man, woman and child in this country. But that should be the overriding —and self-correcting — goal for this economy.  Rest assured that when and if that happens, jobs will be plentiful, workers will be well paid, growth will restore our belief in the future, and the ruinous inflation that everyone predicts may be averted.

As a young instructor at the University of Minnesota I trained idealistic young people for the War on Poverty, and I observed that only one strategy succeeded in that war:  Lifting the productive capacity of every man, woman and child who were trapped in a system designed to keep them poor.  Subsequently, I have had the privilege of working in China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Norway and Sweden. In their disparate cultures and economies, I found that productivity-focused strategies always worked, and that they were the quickest ways to create new growth and new jobs.

I also had the privilege of working with half a million children and youth in 72 slums across this country for the purpose of improving health.  That was when I learned about the importance of employment for heads of families.  It is where I learned to make use of dedicated health professionals to improve health with maximum effectiveness.  That is why health improvement teams had to include occupational therapists, social workers, mental health workers and nutritionists, in addition to physicians, nurses, dentists, physical therapists and speech and hearing professionals.  The work of such comprehensive health improvement teams helped improve the health of the registrants in these seventy-two projects every quarter for the seven years I worked there, and also caused the cost-per-year-per-registrant to fall, as logic dictates it should.  It was the most successful federal project for improving the health of children and youth in the history of this country. Some 500 papers document how it was done.

We know how to make people healthy.  The VA knows it.  Every thinking health care professional knows it.  Set the goal for bringing this nation to health in your first term!  Believe me, it is possible, and it is doable.

It is crises that bring about change, and opportunities for change.  Please do not waste this crisis — like a forest fire, it has within its own destructive force the power to create new and spectacular growth.  We need to burn off excess unproductive activities, wasteful habits and the passive acceptance of the destructive storm that is now raging across the country.

We brought that storm on ourselves.

We can still it.

Mr. President Barack Obama, please, unite this nation under the dignity of a common goal of recovery and provide the resources we need to meet and exceed that noble goal. It worked in World War II. It will work today.