Obama Touts Stimulus Again but Meets More Resistance

With subtle blow at the previous administration, Obama says he has solutions.

ByABC News
March 12, 2009, 5:28 PM

March 12, 2009— -- Meeting with business leaders and chief executives this afternoon, President Obama hailed his stimulus plan and budget as an investment "that will lead to tomorrow's prosperity."

"You see, we cannot go back to endless cycles of bubble and bust," Obama said at the Business Roundtable. "We can't continue to base our economy on reckless speculation and spending beyond our means; on bad credit and inflated home prices and overleveraged banks."

Dubbing the roller-coaster economy of the past decade or so the illusion of prosperity, the president said the fix lies in the hundreds of billions of dollars in stimulus money he has pushed on infrastructure, energy, education and health care, and that his budget will also restore stability.

"I am not choosing to address these additional challenges just because I feel like it, or because I'm a glutton for punishment," he said. "I am doing so because they are fundamental to our economic growth, and to ensuring that we don't have more crises like this in the future. ... I didn't come here to pass our problems on to the next president or the next generation, I'm here to solve them."

Part of that rests on the success of the $787 billion stimulus package. Earlier today, Vice President Joe Biden took a strong tone against wasteful projects in the stimulus money going to states. Nearly $8 billion of the stimulus money will start going to state and local governments, with $780 million being released in the next few days.

"This is not your usual federal grant going to the states," Biden said. "Six months from now, if the verdict on this effort is that we've wasted the money, we built things that were unnecessary, or we've done things that are legal but make no sense, then, folks, don't look for any help from the federal government for a long while."

Supporters of the president's stimulus plan, such as Tony Anaya -- the point person for New Mexico's stimulus money -- said that getting this money to create jobs is far easier said than done.