This afternoon, while speaking to the press from the State Dining Room, President Obama addressed the news from Friday that the United States received a downgrade by one of the credit rating agencies:

The fact is, we didn’t need a rating agency to tell us that we need a balanced, long-term approach to deficit reduction.  That was true last week.  That was true last year.  That was true the day I took office.  And we didn’t need a rating agency to tell us that the gridlock in Washington over the last several months has not been constructive, to say the least.  We knew from the outset that a prolonged debate over the debt ceiling -- a debate where the threat of default was used as a bargaining chip -- could do enormous damage to our economy and the world’s.  That threat, coming after a string of economic disruptions in Europe, Japan and the Middle East, has now roiled the markets and dampened consumer confidence and slowed the pace of recovery.

When I was superintendent in Chicago, I never looked forward to a call from Washington telling me what I have to do. Now that I'm in Washington, I try not to make those calls.

Our job is to support reform that is good for students at the state and local level.  We need to get out of the way wherever we can.  We need to be tight on the goals but loose on the means of achieving them -- providing as much flexibility as possible, while maintaining meaningful accountability for improving student outcomes and closing achievement gaps.

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) got it backwards -- it was loose on the goals but tight on the means -- and today it's forcing states into one-size-fits-all solutions that just don’t work.

The President understands this and he has directed the Department of Education to move ahead in providing relief in return for reform.

With the new school year fast approaching and still no bill to reform NCLB, it’s time to create a process for states to gain flexibility from key provisions of the law, provided that they are willing to embrace education reform.

In the decades since the world first pledged “never again,” the U.S. response to mass atrocities and genocide has confronted several challenges. First, governmental engagement on atrocities and genocide often arrives late, when opportunities for prevention have been missed.  Second, senior decision-makers are often not personally engaged because there is a government-wide assumption that there is little that can or will be done. And third, too few other international players step up to try to prevent atrocities, and come under little domestic pressure to do so. As a result, too often, we and the rest of the international community have later regretted not taking diplomatic, political, economic, legal, and military steps that might have prevented the loss of tens of thousands of lives. In 2008 the Genocide Prevention Task Force, co-chaired by former Secretaries Madeleine K. Albright and William Cohen, found that preventing genocide was an “achievable goal” but one that required a degree of governmental organization that matches the kind of methodical organization that accompanies mass-killings. 

This week, President Obama directed a comprehensive review to strengthen the United States’ ability to prevent mass atrocities. The President’s directive states plainly that: “Preventing mass atrocities and genocide is a core national security interest and a core moral responsibility of the United States of America.” The directive creates an important new tool in this effort, establishing a standing interagency Atrocities Prevention Board with the authority to develop prevention strategies and to ensure that concerns are elevated for senior decision-making so that we are better able to work with our allies and partners to be responsive to early warning signs and prevent potential atrocities. The directive recognizes that preventing mass atrocities is a responsibility that all nations share and that other countries must also be enlisted to respond to particular crises. Therefore, the directive calls for  a strategy for engaging key regional allies and partners so that they are prepared to accept greater responsibility for preventing and responding to crimes against humanity. 

Over the past two years, the Obama Administration has devoted enormous time and energy to better equipping our Government, and the international community as a whole, to be able to respond meaningfully to potential (and actual) atrocities.  He is the first president to establish a position at the White House responsible for policy on war crimes and mass atrocity.  In Sudan, we launched a full court diplomatic press that helped ensure that the South Sudan referendum occurred on time, thereby preventing the outbreak of mass violence that would have accompanied a delay.  In Kyrgyzstan, through engagement at the highest levels, we helped bring about the creation of a formidable international commission of inquiry to investigate the causes of the ethnic killings there and to prevent relapse into conflict.  In Cote d’Ivoire, we facilitated a robust international effort to protect civilians, while maintaining firm resolve that strong-man Laurent Gbagbo had to step down.  In Libya, as civilians were being targeted by their own leader for ruthless attack, we mobilized – with unprecedented speed -- an international coalition, operating with a mandate from the Security Council and at the request of the Libyan people and the Arab League, to protect civilians endangered by Qadhaffi.  When indicators of a potential relapse into conflict emerged around the constitutional referendum in Kenya, we worked with international partners and Kenyan leaders to support a peaceful and credible process.

We know that often holding those who have carried out mass atrocities accountable is at times our best tool to prevent future atrocities.  As such, we have engaged in an intensive effort to create a variety of international mechanisms charged with uncovering the facts and identifying those responsible for gross human rights abuses in Syria, Libya, Kyrgyzstan, Cote d’Ivoire, and have announced our commitment to accomplish the same in Burma. We have also intensified our focus on finding the world’s most wanted fugitive war criminals, mobilizing interagency focus and resources towards apprehending those who must face justice.   We offered our full support to the Government of Serbia as it successfully pursued the final remaining fugitives from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Ratko Mladic and Goran Hadzic, who were apprehended this year.  

In addition to the Presidential directive, which makes clear the level of priority attached to preventing mass atrocity, we are taking another important step forward in our effort to hold accountable human rights abusers by, for the first time, barring entry into the United States of persons who organize or participate in mass atrocities, war crimes, crimes against humanity, or other serious violations of human rights.   Existing U.S. law renders specific classes of human rights violators inadmissible to the United States – such as participants in genocide, torture, or extra-judicial killings. However, before today, the United States did not have an explicit bar to admission on the basis of participation in other serious human rights or humanitarian law violations or atrocities.  The President’s Proclamation fills this gap, and by enumerating these grounds for denying admission to the United States, policymakers will have a new tool to warn groups that have carried out, or may be about to carry out crimes against humanity, war crimes, and related abuses , that their conduct falls within explicit standing bans on admission to the United States.  As such, we will be able to more effectively shame those who are organizing widespread and systematic violence against civilians based on ethnicity, religion, or other protected characteristics. In banning would-be organizers of human rights violations as well as perpetrators, it allows the United States to act expeditiously before planned atrocities metastasize into actual ones.

We know that the steps this administration has taken are not panaceas to the horrifying violence being perpetrated around the world against civilians. Even today, we see violence against civilians from Syria to Sudan. But President Obama has directed us to scrub every option and bring as many levers as possible to bear in trying to influence the calculus of those promoting ethnic, religious and other forms of mass violence. The Obama administration takes very seriously its responsibility to do everything that we can to prevent atrocities, and -- with the President’s Directive and his Proclamation barring human rights violators from entering the United States -- President Obama has given the US government two new tools in the effort to meet this responsibility.

 Read the Fact Sheet

[Ed. Note: To celebrate the first six months of the White House-led Startup America initiative, this week we are highlighting the stories of real entrepreneurs who are creating jobs across the country.

The Startup America initiative aims to create the right policy environment for entrepreneurs to flourish.  For example, the President signed into law a 100% capital gains tax cut for investment in small businesses made throughout 2011. The President’s budget would make this tax incentive permanent.]

I am a molecular biologist with a Ph.D. from Ohio State University, and a serial entrepreneur, having started several venture-backed biotech companies in Pennsylvania. I founded TheraVasc two years ago in Cleveland, OH because I want to bring a promising new therapy from the lab to the marketplace.  My team of a dozen leading researchers and clinicians from around the country is developing a drug that has the potential to increase new blood vessel formation and promote wound healing when used continuously at very low doses, which could have major benefits for diabetic patients with limb problems and patients with peripheral artery disease. 

In fact, once the research that was done on this drug at Louisiana State University was published, it became very clear that there was a tremendous unmet medical need. We received calls from across the country inquiring about where to obtain the drug, including one from an 84-year-old woman in Shreveport. She had been ranked 7th on the U.S. tennis circuit in her youth, had walked a mile a day when she was 80, but now, because of peripheral artery disease, she couldn’t even walk down to the mailbox without pain. 

This is exactly the kind of person we’re trying to help, but unfortunately, the only way we can currently administer the drug is an injectable formulation at doses that are unsafe for the continuous use required for treating vascular diseases. Given the need for truly effective therapies and the properties of this drug, we set up TheraVasc to extend the work initiated at LSU Health Sciences Center to develop a low-dose, oral formulation of the drug for patients like our neighbor in Louisiana.  

This kind of research and testing is extremely expensive. But – in large part because of the Obama Administration’s tax incentive for small business investments -- we were able to raise over $2 million for these early clinical trials from individual “angel” investors. In fact, when the incentive was set to originally expire on December 31, 2010 (The President has signed a one-year extension, and wants to make it permanent), one individual wired us $20,000 on December 30 to ensure that they didn’t miss the deadline!

These funds allowed us to complete our Phase I study showing the safety of a single dose, and will allow us to carry out our Phase IIa study, where we believe we will show safety of continuous administration and evidence of biological activity. And this means that patients are now receiving this drug, which we hope will provide a true therapy for these serious problems and provide a much better quality of life. 

Although TheraVasc is a small biotech startup with relatively few employees, this investment has allowed us to hire a contract research organization to manage the trial, manufacturing and analytical companies to produce the drug, and up to 10 clinical sites to carry out the Phase IIa clinical trial -- creating and supporting numerous jobs, all in the U.S. 

Equally important, the 5-year holding requirement for this tax incentive encourages our investors to build a sustainable company, and not simply pursue a “quick flip.”  This means that once we obtain positive Phase IIa results, new jobs will be created at TheraVasc and within our partner organizations, as development continues and the trial size is expanded. Since clinical trials generally take a minimum of 5 years, this holding period will help to ensure that TheraVasc is still an ongoing entity by the time the drug is approved for use in humans. 

My father-in-law also has peripheral artery disease and he is anxious to begin receiving our drug. This tax incentive was important to me in raising the funds necessary to carry out our clinical research and hopefully providing my father-in-law, the ex-tennis star and many others the treatment they desperately want. Making the tax incentive permanent would be a tremendous incentive for angel investors to back other longer-term drug development companies, providing more new therapies for poorly treated diseases.

To read more startup success stories, see other blog posts in this series by Manu Kumar, Tal Flanchraych and Theodore Lasser.

To celebrate the first six months of the White House-led Startup America initiative, this week we are highlighting the stories of real entrepreneurs who are creating jobs across the country.

The Startup America initiative aims to create the right policy environment for entrepreneurs to flourish.  For example, the President signed into law a 100% capital gains tax cut for investment in small businesses made throughout 2011. The President’s budget would make this tax incentive permanent.

Dr. Kyle Hansen is an Army veteran who served our country in Afghanistan. He is also the founder and CEO of “Heal the VET,” a company that has created software that enables and encourages veterans to proactively care for themselves between physician visits.  Like all of America’s veterans, Dr Hansen developed strong leadership and management skills during his military service but even the most complicated battlefield assignments don’t prepare people for navigating the world of business plans, angel investors, venture capitalists and tax codes.
 
That’s where Veteran Entrepreneurial Transfer (VETransfer) comes in. Located here in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, we are the first ever Veteran-focused business incubator, and we launched in March 2011, after the VA Innovation Initiative (VAi2) — whose mission is to identify, fund, and evaluate new and improved ways the government can serve Veterans— selected our proposal to assemble a team of experienced entrepreneurs to found the first business accelerator focused solely on supporting the Veteran entrepreneur.
 
Our mission at VETransfer is “to improve veteran entrepreneurs’ outcomes by providing resources and support as they build and accelerate their businesses.”  We believe that veterans possess unique skills that, when supported in entrepreneurship, can lead to powerful outcomes. Dr. Hansen is currently part of our Incubation program, where he is learning lean business model startup techniques specific to software offerings. Next up for “Heal the VET” is offering recommendations based on health risks associated with the specific time and theater of a veteran’s service.

Welcome to the West Wing Week, your guide to everything that's happening at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. This week, President Obama announced a bi-partisan compromise to reduce the deficit and avoid default (infographic), announced a historic fuel efficiency standard that will save American families money, welcomed the crews of the Space Shuttle Endeavour and International Space Station expedition 26, held a cabinet meeting, and celebrated his 50th birthday. That's July 29th to August 5th, or West Wing Week.

I am thrilled this morning that the Senate has approved an FAA bill.  It is a tremendous victory for American workers everywhere.

I'm thrilled for our dedicated FAA employees who will be able to go back to work on Monday.  And I'm thrilled for the tens of thousands of hardworking workers who can go back to airport construction sites around the country.

As a matter of fairness, we will also do everything we can to get Congress to provide our furloughed employees with the back pay they deserve.

Today’s employment report shows that private sector payrolls increased by 154,000 in July and the unemployment rate ticked down to 9.1 percent.  The economy has added 2.4 million private sector jobs over the past 17 months, despite a slowdown in economic growth from substantial headwinds in the first half of the year.

While the better than expected report is welcome news, the unemployment rate remains unacceptably high and faster growth is needed to replace the jobs lost in the downturn. Bipartisan action is needed to help the private sector and the economy grow – such as measures to extend both the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance, as well as passing the pending free trade agreements with re-employment assistance for displaced workers, the patent reform bill, and a bipartisan infrastructure bill to help put Americans back to work.  This week we averted an economic catastrophe by avoiding a default and putting in place an important down payment on long term deficit reduction.  We will continue to work with Congress to build on these efforts to achieve a broader balanced deficit reduction agreement that instills confidence and allows us to live within our means without shortchanging future growth.