With the US economy still firmly in the grip of a tenacious recession, President Barack Obama is urging Americans to have patience and give his economic recovery plan time to work.
Restating themes he laid out in his weekly radio and Internet address, Obama said in an op-ed posted early today on The Washington Post's website that his $787 billion stimulus programme was not expected to return the economy to full health, but to provide a boost that would stop the free fall.
"So far, it has done that," the president wrote. "It was, from the start, a two-year programme, and it will steadily save and create jobs as it ramps up over this summer and fall."
He said his stimulus plan must be given time to work and appealed to Americans, who are increasingly uneasy with rising unemployment and ballooning budget deficits, to let his plan "work the way it's supposed to, with the understanding that in any recession, unemployment tends to recover more slowly than other measures of economic activity".
The public has said in polls that it was willing to give Obama time to deal with the economic mess he inherited from President George W Bush, but with unemployment pushing toward 10 per cent, that patience will likely be tested.
Republicans, sensing a political opening, have seized the opportunity to argue that Obama's economic stimulus plan was expensive and ineffective.
