Today at the Brookings Institution, amid dropping poll numbers, President Obama addressed the serious problem of jobs in America, and his administration's attempts to help to jump start hiring across the nation.

He began by giving everyone in attendance a brief reminder of what his administration has done to stem the tide of the collapse of not only the housing bubble, but also the complete collapse of the banking sector.  He spoke about the stimulus package saying that it has saved thousands of jobs, from teachers to police officers across the nation and pointed towards the latest jobs figures which showed a loss of only 11,000 jobs for the month of November, which in stark contrast to the same time last year when jobs were being lost at a rate of over 700,000 per month.

The President also detailed his great concern that banks were not lending to small business despite the Wall Street turn around with record profits.  So the he, in an attempt to spur hiring, has proposed several initiatives including a complete elimination of capital gains tax on small business for the next year and to use some of the $200 billion not used on TARP as money available to lend to small business in the absence of private sector lending.  Secondly, the President proposed an expansion of infrastructure projects to create jobs immediately and lay the foundation for future green jobs as well as an updated and modern energy grid.  Third and lastly, he proposed increased investment in developing technology to boost the green jobs industry so that they could use the expanded and updated infrastructure.  Each of these proposals were issues discussed prior to the stimulus package, especially by the more liberal pundits and political groups which were essentially left out when Congress developed the legislation.

President Obama also wanted to make clear that government can only do so much when it comes to jobs, but that in concert with Congress he hoped to sign bills detailing these initiatives very soon.  As a way to allay fears about more spending he made it clear that his recovery package was only a small part of the ballooning deficit which had been growing without check for the last 8 years and unfortuantely his administration had to pay the nation's way out economic catastrophe and that his goal was to bring down the deficit.  He criticized massive spending and tax cuts by Republicans that left a huge deficit and a ruined economy, putting him in a position having to spend the country out of the economic collapse, buying time for private industry to recover and begin hiring again.

Watch the speech below: