Obama made an aggressive push for House and Senate lawmakers to work quickly to resolve their differences in an economic bill whose pricetag has swung from $720 billion upward toward a trillion dollars. The new president had hoped to sign economic legislation on his first day in office, but instead has spent his first three weeks in office wrangling with a reluctant Congress
- including fellow Democrats - to heed his leadership.
Obama inched closer to a completed economic bill, as lawmakers sought to put their own stamp on the legislation. The House
- without a single Republican vote - passed an $819 billion bill that gave many moderates pause for its size and scope.
Senate leaders went to work paring down that bill, working late into Friday to produce a $780 billion version. A vote on the measure could come as soon as Monday.
Most Republicans still looked at the bill skeptically, with only two publicly signing onto the proposal.
Sen. John McCain, Obama's Republican opponent in last November's election, mocked the bill and said lawmakers could call it many things, "but
'bipartisan' is not one of them."
Obama and his advisers have grown more assertive in recent days, reminding Democrats that voters gave them the White House, the House and the Senate to bring change, not partisan gamesmanship.
"In the midst of our greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, the American people were hoping that Congress would begin to confront the great challenges we face," Obama said in the address, released before he made his first trip to Camp David, the presidential retreat in the Maryland mountains.
"That was, after all, what last November's election was all about."
Republicans characterized Obama's rhetoric as arrogant.
"Democrats have controlled both branches of government for less than a month. And you have to wonder if all that power has gone to their heads," Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said in the GOP's weekly address. "For the last two weeks, they've been trying to force a massive spending bill through Congress under the guise of economic relief."
The economic bill is the first legislative test of his presidency, one his top aides have worked to turn into a victory. But Obama has found it increasingly difficult to manage the liberal wing of his party, which wanted more money directed to infrastructure, governors who wanted more money allocated to help patch their thin budgets and moderate members of his own party.
