Obama Defends Emergency Stimulus Plan

By Jennifer Loven

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama, urgently pressuring lawmakers to approve a massive economic recovery bill, turned his first news conference Monday night into a determined defense of his emergency plan and an offensive against Republicans who try to "play the usual political games."

He said the recession has left the nation so weak that only the federal government can "jolt our economy back to life." And he declared that failure to act swiftly and boldly "could turn a crisis into a catastrophe."

"The party now is over," he said.

Speedy passage of legislation to pump federal money into the crippled economy, once seemingly assured with bipartisan support, has become a much heavier lift and a major test of Obama's young presidency. With more than 11 million Americans now out of work, Obama defended his program against Republican criticism that it is too big, loaded with pork-barrel spending and won't 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 said the country could well be in better shape by next year, as measured by increased hiring, lending, home values and other factors. "If we get things right, then, starting next year, we can start seeing significant improvement," Obama said.