Jul 12, 2009 8:00 am US/Central
Obama: Stimulus Won't Restore Economy 100 Percent
WASHINGTON (CBS) ―
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President Barack Obama speaks during a press conference at the Group of Eight (G8) summit in L'Aquila, in central Italy, on July 10, 2009.
Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
With the economy still firmly in the grip of a tenacious recession, President Barack Obama is urging Americans to be patient and give his economic recovery plan enough time to work.
Restating themes he laid out in his weekly radio and Internet address, Obama said in an op-ed posted early Sunday on
The Washington Post's Web site that his $787 billion stimulus program was not expected to return the economy to full robust health, but to provide a boost that would stop the free fall.
In the article titled "Rebuilding Something Better," Obama wrote, "The swift and aggressive action we took in those first few months has helped pull our financial system and our economy back from the brink."
"So far, it has done that," the president wrote. "It was, from the start, a two-year program, and it will steadily save and create jobs as it ramps up over this summer and fall."
He said the stimulus plan must be given time to work and appealed to Americans, who are increasingly uneasy with rising unemployment and ballooning budget deficits, to let his plan "work the way it's supposed to, with the understanding that in any recession, unemployment tends to recover more slowly than other measures of economic activity."
The public has said in polls that it was willing to give Obama time to deal with the economic mess he inherited from President George W. Bush, but with unemployment pushing toward 10 percent, that patience may wane.
Republicans, sensing a political opening, have seized the opportunity to argue that Obama's economic stimulus plan was expensive and ineffective.
"Simply put, this is now President Obama's economy and the American people are beginning to question whether his policies are working," Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House Republican whip, said in the GOP's weekly address.
Obama, in the op-ed, said "Even as we rescue this economy from a full-blown crisis, I have insisted that we must rebuild it better than before."
Health care costs must be controlled, jobs created within the U.S., worker training programs established and budget deficits reduced, he said.
(© 2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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