Obama urges speedy action

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama, pressuring lawmakers urgently to approve a massive economic recovery bill, criticized Republicans who have balked at the legislation Monday night and said, "I can't afford to see Congress play the usual political games."

Obama used the first prime-time news conference of his presidency to warn that a failure to act swiftly and boldly "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. "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."

Obama addressed the nation from the East Room of the White House in a news conference that lasted almost exactly one hour. He hit repeatedly at the themes he has emphasized in recent weeks, including at a town hall meeting to promote his plan earlier in the day in Elkhart, Ind.

When the stimulus bill passed the House last month, 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 he had made a deliberate effort to reach out to the GOP, putting three Republicans into his Cabinet, and "as I continue to make these overtures, over time, hopefully that will be reciprocated."

"So my bottom line when it comes to the recovery package is: send me a bill that creates or saves 4 million jobs."

Obama acknowledged the difficulty of mending political divisions between Republicans and Democrats.

"Old habits are hard to break," he said. "We're coming off an election, and people sort of want to test the limits of what they can get. There's a lot of jockeying in this town and who's up and who's down, testing for the next election."

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.

"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," he said.

Rejecting criticism that the emphasis on federal action was too great, 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.

Obama used a South Carolina public school to defend spending in the stimulus package.

The president visited the 113-year-old J.V. Martin Junior High School in Dillon in August 2007 while campaigning for the Democratic primary election and told the nation Monday that it is the reason the federal government should be investing in education.

"Kids are still learning in that school, as best they can," Obama said, recalling the way the building shakes when a train passes on the nearby tracks and a broken-down auditorium.

The junior high was featured in the documentary "Corridor of Shame," which highlighted the poverty that stretches along Interstate 95 in rural South Carolina. S.C. Superintendent of Education Jim Rex submitted the school as one of the state's "shovel-ready" projects that could benefit from the stimulus money.

Yvonne Wenger of The Post and Courier staff contributed to this report.