Obama Lays Out Jobs Plan

Obama also touched on the need to tackle the nation's deficit, saying that he plans to both spend for job creation and cut the deficit during his time in office.

"There are those who claim that we have to choose between paying down our deficits on the one hand and investing in job creation and economic growth on the other," President Obama said. "This is a false choice."

Obama later added that he's "still committed to halving the deficit we inherited by the end of [his] first term."

Administration officials said the tab for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, once estimated to cost $341 billion, is expected to come in about $200 billion less. White House aides said that could provide leeway to promote Main Street goals and pay down the deficit.

Still, the President and administration officials have yet to offer a price tag for all of the measures mentioned Tuesday.

Before Tuesday's speech, White House officials were fast to dispute characterizations of the announcement as anything other than broad strokes of a plan moving forward.

"We've got quite some way to go," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday, according to The Associated Press. "The president is not going to unveil the silver bullet idea. ... If there was one idea to do this, I assume it would have been done sometime in the intervening 22 months."

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke made clear on Monday that he expects just moderate growth next year, in part, because of tight credit and continuing sluggishness in the job market.

Some of the nation's largest companies continued to announce layoffs in November, including Aetna(AET), Applied Materials(AMAT), Alcoa(AA) and Boeing(BA).

-- Written by Sung Moss in New York.

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