Stimulus sparks praise, criticism

February 16, 2009 at 12:00a.m.

Obama to travel to Denver to sign $787B bill Tuesday

WASHINGTON (AP) — Keeping the economy front and center, President Barack Obama heads west this week to sign the $787 billion stimulus bill and tackle the home mortgage foreclosure crisis.

The direct appeals for public support follow scant GOP backing in Congress for his agenda and increasing partisan bickering.

Passage of the stimulus measure — unprecedented in its cost — was a major triumph for Obama as he struggles to lift the country from a financial nosedive unseen since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Top aides said Sunday the skyrocketing unemployment rate would fall once the money begins to flow. But they also said the economy will continue its downward spiral in the short term.

“I think it’s safe to say that things have not yet bottomed out,” press secretary Robert Gibbs said. “But this is a big step forward toward making that improvement and putting people back to work.”

The stimulus package, which passed with no GOP support in the House and three Republican votes in the Senate, aims to save or create as many as 3.5 million jobs through massive government investment while boosting consumer spending through modest tax cuts.

The president’s determination to sign the stimulus bill into law in Denver on Tuesday suggests Obama will continue taking his economic message to the American people, who are giving him high marks for handling the crisis. The symbolism is obvious for Colorado, where a growing green-energy industry will draw major benefits from the stimulus.

“He is determined to keep in touch with the American people who sent him here to do this job,” senior adviser David Axelrod said.

Gibbs said the president had taken “unprecedented” steps in a bipartisan effort to include Republicans in the legislative process. But Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., was highly critical, declaring the stimulus would create what he called “generational theft” — huge federal deficits for years to come.

McCain, who lost the presidential race to Obama, said the Democrat had backtracked on promises of bipartisanship and was off to a bad start. “Let’s start over now and sit down together,” McCain said.

Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., put it more bluntly: “If this is going to be bipartisanship, the country’s screwed.”

With the stimulus victory in hand, Obama planned to shift to the housing crisis with an announcement Wednesday in Phoenix.

Late last summer, Americans began feeling the pinch of the recession and left the housing market in huge numbers. That coincided with a sharp increase defaults on home mortgages, a devastating combination that triggered the financial crisis. Lending froze as banks and investment houses realized they were holding trillions of dollars.