The Rocky Mountain Collegian

Issue date: 2/10/09 Section: News

Media Credit: Evan Vucci President Barack Obama pauses during his first prime time press conference in the East Room of the White House on Monday, Feb. 9 in Washington.

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama, pressuring lawmakers to urgently 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."

Continued...

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