Our economy is slowly, but surely, recovering from the most serious economic crisis since the Great Depression. Americans have lost millions of jobs in the past couple of years, dramatically increasing our national unemployment rate. The ongoing downturn in the housing market has resulted in a tidal wave of foreclosures and delinquencies, flooding our communities with hundreds of thousands of blighted, boarded up homes. Americans have witnessed the value of their homes, stocks and pensions drop. College education has become too costly for too many, and affordable healthcare is available to too few.  While the Great Recession is technically over, many are not yet feeling the recovery in their pocketbooks, which is why Congress and the Administration continue to take action to spur economic recovery and get our nation back on track.

In response to the 2008 financial crisis, the Obama Administration, working with Congress, laid out a well thought out path forward for our economic recovery. The plan involved spurring meaningful job creation, fixing our nation's banking system and building a new financial regulatory framework so the mistakes of the past were not repeated. It also meant fixing our weakened housing market and stemming the tide of foreclosures across the country.

In the long term, it is crucial that we put our country back on the path to fiscal responsibility and budget surpluses once the economy recovers. The federal government has been running deficits for the past eight years, which has added to the national debt. If deficits are allowed to persist once the economy gets back on track, the additional debt burden will lead to slower economic growth and lower living standards for future generations. The President and Congress need to look at a range of solutions to bring deficits under control, focusing on suggestions from the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, which include reforms to our tax policies and spending decisions.

I do not want to pass the current economic crisis onto our children’s generation to fix. Our recovery will require hard work and some sacrifice, but if we work smart, think outside of the box and don't give up, we will overcome our problems and eventually come back more financially sound than ever.