Transcript – Obama Radio Address, Saturday, March 7, 2009: “My administration inherited a $1.3 trillion budget deficit, the largest in history. And we’ve inherited a budgeting process as irresponsible as it is unsustainable. For years, as Wall Street used accounting tricks to conceal costs and avoid responsibility, Washington did, too…For the first time in many years, my administration has produced a budget that represents an honest reckoning of where we are and where we need to go. It’s also a budget that begins to make the hard choices that we’ve avoided for far too long — a strategy that cuts where we must and invests where we need. That’s why it includes $2 trillion in deficit reduction, while making historic investments in America’s future. That’s why it reduces discretionary spending for non-defense programs as a share of the economy by more than 10 percent over the next decade — to the lowest level since they began keeping these records nearly half a century ago. And that’s why on Wednesday, I signed a presidential memorandum to end unnecessary no-bid contracts and dramatically reform the way contracts are awarded — reforms that will save the American people up to $40 billion each year.”