“We will repair broken schools, make them energy-efficient, and put new computers in our classrooms,” he said in the address.

The president-elect is bringing new elements of his domestic agenda into his economic recovery plan, committing to a path toward giving every American access to an electronic medical record as part of an “economic recovery plan … that won’t just save jobs, it will save lives.”

Obama had talked in the campaign about lowering health care costs by investing in electronic information technology systems, but not in the context of the economy.

Now, his key initiatives – education, energy, health care – are all being tied back to jobs.

“When Congress reconvenes in January, I look forward to working with them to pass a plan immediately,” Obama says in the address. “We need to act with the urgency this moment demands to save or create at least two and a half million jobs so that the nearly two million Americans who’ve lost them know that they have a future. And that’s exactly what I intend to do as president of the United States.”

Obama had committed just before Thanksgiving to saving or creating 2.5 million jobs in the next two years, more than twice his campaign promise of 1 million new jobs over an unspecified period. But he didn’t say how he would do it. On Saturday, he began to spell it out, offering “five key parts” of his economic plan: