Administration Says Economic Plans Already Showing Results

WASHINGTON, March 3, 2009— -- It was a day of cheerleading for both the economy and the Obama administration itself.

As the Dow Jones Industrial Average continued to extend Monday's losses and Wall Street's concerns that President Obama's economic plan will not work escalated, the president added a new note to his song about how the economy will get better -- by encouraging Americans to buy and invest.

"I'm absolutely confident that they will work," Obama said of his administration's economic plans during a photo opportunity with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. "And I'm absolutely confident that credit is going to be flowing again, that businesses are going to start seeing opportunities for investment, they're going to start hiring again, people are going to be put back to work."

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Comparing the ups and downs and the trustworthiness of the stock market to a tracking poll in politics, Obama suggested that Americans should step up buying.

"What I'm looking at is not the day-to-day gyrations of the stock market, but the long-term ability for the United States and the entire world economy to regain its footing," Obama said.

"What you're now seeing is profit and earning ratios are starting to get to the point where buying stocks is a potentially good deal if you've got a long-term perspective on it," he said.

In a series of news conferences and hearings today, the administration continued to push the idea that its economic plans will not only work, they are already beginning to show results.

The president began his day at the Department of Transportation where he hailed the $28 billion from the stimulus that will be used to fund highway, road and bridge construction and repair.

That investment, he said, would create or save 150,000 jobs by the end of 2010 -- more than General Motors, Ford and Chrysler have lost in manufacturing in the last three years combined.

"Two weeks ago, I signed into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the most sweeping economic recovery plan in history. And already, its impact is being felt across this nation," the president said, flanked by Vice President Joe Biden and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

"Through the Recovery Act, we will be investing $28 billion in our highways, money that every one of our 50 states can start using immediately to put people back to work," LaHood said. "I can say that 14 days after I signed our Recovery Act into law, we are seeing shovels hit the ground."

LaHood and Obama said the first contract will be awarded to American Infrastructure, a family business in Pennsylvania that will resurface a road in Maryland -- New Hampshire Avenue, that hasn't been repaved in almost a generation.

"This one project alone will create 60 jobs," said Neil Pederson, a Maryland state highway administrator.

Administration Out in Full Force for Stimulus Plans

While Obama took his agenda to the Interior Department this afternoon, his Cabinet members continued the cheerleading on Capitol Hill, arguing that their work is having a positive impact.

"The president's budget carries forward and expands upon our immediate response to the acute problems confronting America," Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said at a House Ways and Means Committee hearing. "This budget embodies our values, our aspirations and our will to overcome the current crisis and usher in a new prosperity."

Separately, on the Hill, Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag also defended the budget and Obama's economic plan.

"The new administration has inherited an economic crisis unlike any we have seen in our lifetimes," he said. "If we don't adopt the policies that are in this budget, the budget deficit over the next decade will be $2 trillion higher and we will not have addressed problems in our energy market, in our educational system and in our health care system.

"None of this is going to be easy, whether it's in education, in energy, in health care, responsibly reducing the deficit in an honest way over the medium term, but as the country music singer Toby Keith once put it, 'There ain't no right way to do the wrong thing,'" Orszag added.

Convincing Opponents

But the administration's push today was not enough to convince Republican skeptics.

"It's pretty clear that the administration is recommending that we continue the spending binge that has begun here at the beginning of the -- of the year," Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said after a policy luncheon this afternoon. "And we have already in the first year of the new Congress spent more money than the previous seven years combined, spent more money than we spent on Iraq, Afghanistan, and the response to [Hurricane] Katrina."

"In addition to the massive spending and taxation leading to record-breaking deficits and record-breaking debt for this country, the policy changes ... will dramatically and permanently transform what America looks like," Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., said.

"The facts surrounding this budget are disturbing. It proposes to bring the size of our government to its largest level ever since World War II," said Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis.

The administration also announced today that to ease credit flow, the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve put out the terms and conditions for the Consumer and Business Lending Initiative, $100 billion -- ultimately to be worth $1 trillion -- of credit for private investors to finance credit cards and auto and student loans.