Obama: 'We will recover from recession'

by Mark Silva

President Barack Obama, who hopes to use a prime-time press conference tonight to promote both his administration's solutions for the recession and the new budget that he proposes, will call the $3.55-trillion spending plan part of the solution.

"We've put in place a comprehensive strategy designed to attack this crisis on all fronts,'' the president plans to say in his opening remarks at the 8 pm EDT White House news conference. "It's a strategy to create jobs, to help responsible homeowners, to re-start lending, and to grow our economy over the long-term. And we are beginning to see signs of progress.''

Supporters praise the president's budget as ambitious in its initatives, but critics call it another Democratic dose of big-spending -- with a deficit of more than $1 trillion next year, which Obama promises to halve by the end of his term.

"The budget I submitted to Congress will build our economic recovery on a stronger foundation, so that we do not face another crisis like this ten or twenty years from now,'' Obama plans to say, according to the White House.

"We invest in the renewable sources of energy that will lead to new jobs, new businesses, and less dependence on foreign oil,'' the president will say of his budget.

"We invest in our schools and our teachers so that our children have the skills they need to compete with any workers in the world,'' Obama plans to say. " We invest in reform that will bring down the cost of health care for families, businesses, and our government. And in this budget, we have made the tough choices necessary to cut our deficit in half by the end of my first term - even under the most pessimistic estimates.

"At the end of the day, the best way to bring our deficit down in the long run is not with a budget that continues the very same policies that have led to a narrow prosperity and massive debt. It's with a budget that leads to broad economic growth by moving from an era of borrow and spend to one where we save and invest.

"That's what clean energy jobs and businesses will do. That's what a highly-skilled workforce will do,'' Obama plans to say, according to excerpts of his opening remarks released by the White House today. "That's what an efficient health care system that controls costs and entitlements like Medicare and Medicaid will do. That's why this budget is inseparable from this recovery - because it is what lays the foundation for a secure and lasting prosperity.

"We will recover from this recession,'' Obama will say. " But it will take time, it will take patience, and it will take an understanding that when we all work together; when each of us looks beyond our own short-term interests to the wider set of obligations we have to each other - that's when we succeed.

"That's when we prosper,'' the president plans to say. "And that's what is needed right now. So let us look toward the future with a renewed sense of common purpose, a renewed determination, and most importantly, a renewed confidence that a better day will come.''