US President Barack Obama hailed the ‘beginning of the end’ of emergency efforts to rescue the US economy, in newly hopeful rhetoric before he signed a $787bn stimulus bill into law.
He signed the bill at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.
Mr Obama declared the bill would lay the groundwork for ‘real and lasting change for generations to come’.
Mr Obama has staked his own political viability on the package, a mixture of tax cuts and spending projects, saying its success will determine his own.
As he embarked on his trip west, which tomorrow includes the announcement in Arizona of a new plan to stall mortgage foreclosures, the White House showcased the stimulus bill on a new website, Recovery.gov, which tracks how the cash will be spent.
The White House also released state-by-state details on what it said would be the impact of the stimulus.
The figures also included detailed estimates of how many jobs the plan would create in each congressional district, an apparent attempt to pressure Republican House of Representative members who unanimously opposed the bill.
The new bill aims to create or preserve 3.5m jobs, many of them so-called ‘green jobs,’ as the country confronts its highest unemployment rate in 16 years, which stood at 7.6% in January.
Presidential aides had warned the unemployment rate would shoot into double figures if Congress refused to pass the plan.
Roughly one-third of the stimulus funds will be spent on tax cuts, totalling $286bn, in an effort to boost consumer spending, a key engine of the world's largest economy.
But a further $120bn is being allocated to ‘shovel-ready’ infrastructure projects, for such things as transportation, road-building, improving the power grid and renewable energy installations.
But there has been Republican anger at the size of the package, and the bill was pushed through Congress only after a bruising battle.
In addition to the Republican House boycott, only a handful of senators supported it.
