Obama says stimulus vital to avoid 'catastrophe'

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama
pressed Congress Monday night to urgently approve a massive economic
recovery bill, using the first prime-time news conference of his
presidency to warn that a failure to act "could turn a crisis into a
catastrophe."
With the nation falling
deeper into a long and painful recession, Obama defended his program
against Republican criticism that it is loaded with pork-barrel
spending and will not create jobs.
"The
plan is not perfect," the president said, addressing the nation from
the East Room of the White House. "No plan is. I can't tell you for
sure that everything in this plan will work exactly as we hope, but I
can tell you with complete confidence that a failure to act will only
deepen this crisis as well as the pain felt by millions of Americans."
When
the stimulus bill passed the House, not a single Republican voted for
it. On Monday an $838 billion version of the legislation cleared a
crucial test vote in the Senate by a 61-36 margin, with all but three
Republican senators opposing it.
Obama said the federal government was the only power that could save the nation at a time of crisis, with huge spending outlays and tax cuts that he contended could save or create up to 4 million jobs.
"At this particular moment, with the private sector
so weakened by this recession, the federal government is the only
entity left with the resources to jolt our economy back to life," Obama
said.
Rejecting criticism, he said that
90 percent of the jobs created by the plan would be in the private
sector, rebuilding crumbling roads, bridges and other aging
infrastructure.
"The plan that
ultimately emerges from Congress must be big enough and bold enough to
meet the size of the economic challenge we face right now," Obama said.
Again and again, he stressed that the economy is in dire straits.
"This
is not your ordinary, run of the mill recession," he said. Obama said
the United States aims to avoid the kind of economic pain that Japan endured in the 1990s — the "lost decade" when that nation showed no economic growth.
"My
bottom line is to make sure that we are saving or creating 4 million
jobs," he said, and that homeowners facing foreclosure receive some
relief.
While Obama stressed the economy in the opening minutes of the news conference, he also faced questions on foreign policy, and was asked how his administration would deal with Iran, a nation accused by the United States of supporting terrorism and pursuing nuclear weapons.
The
president said his administration was reviewing its policy toward Iran
"looking at places where we can have constructive dialogue." He also
said it was time for Iran to change its behavior.
"My
expectation is in the coming months we will be looking for openings
that can be created where we can be sitting across the table face to
face," Obama said.
He said that Iran must understand that funding terrorist organizations and pursuing nuclear weapons are unacceptable.