By KUNA,
WASHINGTON : In his first prime-time television address as US President, Barack Obama on Monday night urged all members of the US Congress to act without delay in the coming week to resolve their differences and pass the proposed 827-billion-dollar US economic package.
The most important part of the plan is that it will save or create up to 4 million jobs, “because that is what America needs most right now,” the President said.
At this moment, with the private sector so weakened by the recession, the federal government is the only entity left with the resources to jolt the US economy back to life, Obama said.
“It is only government that can break the vicious cycle where lost jobs lead to people spending less money which leads to even more layoffs, and breaking that cycle is exactly what the plan that is moving through Congress is designed to do,” he said.
The plan will also provide a 2,500-dollar tax credit to those struggling to pay the cost of college tuition, and 1,000 dollars worth of tax relief to working and middle-class families, he said.
The plan combines “hundreds of billions in tax cuts for the middle-class with direct investments in areas like health care, energy, education, and infrastructure investments that will save jobs, create new jobs and new businesses, and help our economy grow again, now and in the future,” Obama said.
More than 90 percent of the jobs created by the plan will be in the private sector, the President said, including “jobs building the wind turbines and solar panels and fuel-efficient cars that will lower our dependence on foreign oil, and modernizing a costly health care system that will save us billions of dollars and countless lives.” The legislation “contains an unprecedented level of transparency and accountability, so that every American will be able to go online and see where and how we are spending every dime,” he said.
Obama said he could not say that everything in the 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.
” He said his administration inherited a deficit of more than 1 trillion dollars, “but because we also inherited the most profound economic emergency since the Great Depression, doing too little or nothing at all will result in an even greater deficit of jobs, incomes, and confidence.” That is a deficit that could turn a crisis into a catastrophe, “and I refuse to let that happen,” he said. “As long as I hold this office, I will do whatever it takes to put this country back to work.”(end) rm.wsa KUNA 100902 Feb 09NNNN