Obama first press conference
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February 9th, 2009
President Barack Obama continued to promote his economic stimulus plan, Monday night, as he faced a room of reporters for his first prime-time news conference.
Before taking his first question, Obama admitted his $838 billion plan is “not perfect” but said it needed to be passed before the economy gets worse.
“I can’t tell you for sure that everything in this plan will work exactly as we hope,” Obama said, “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 later added that it’s too early to tell whether another bank bailout will be needed, saying the country “averted catastrophe” by passing the first $700 billion to the financial system.
Still, he said oversight and lack of clarity prevented the U.S. from getting “as big of a bang for the buck” in the first round of bailout funds.
Obama’s current economic recovery plan passed 61-36 in a Senate test vote Monday afternoon– barely meeting the 60 vote majority needed for passage.
In response to a question on the current lack of bipartisan support of the bill, he urged legislators to put party ties aside before it came time to vote on even tougher issues like health care.
“I think that old habits are hard to break,” Obama said, citing politics as a large contributor to opposition of his stimulus plan.
The President never slacked on addressing the current recession Americans are facing. Eight of the thirteen questions he took were related to the economy.
“This is not your ordinary, run of the mill recession,” he said, saying the U.S. must avoid the kind of economic pain Japan endured in the nineties when the country saw no economic growth.
As the evening progressed, the President did have a chance to acknowledge a few questions on foreign policy and national security.
Speaking on Iran he said his nationional security team would be “reviewing” existing policy and “looking at areas where we can have constructive dialogue, where we can directly engage with them.”
“My expectation is that in the coming months we will be looking for openings that can be created where we can start sitting across the table face to face,” he said.
Obama also talked briefly about the war on terror, saying he does not have a timetable for how long it will take to end the war but that he’s “not going to allow al-Qaida and (Osama) bin Laden to operate with impunity, planning attacks.”
The President held the nearly one-hour news conference in the East Room of the White House.
For the most part, his comments repeated themes he has emphasized in recent weeks.
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