DENVER — Even as his aide left open the possibility that another stimulus bill might be necessary, President Barack Obama on Tuesday signed into law the $787 billion package that is a cornerstone of his plan to reverse a dramatic economic downturn.
The stimulus package is one of several steps the administration is taking to preserve or create about 3.5 million jobs and ease the recession.
Today, the president will go to Phoenix to roll out a proposal aimed at curbing home foreclosures. Obama’s Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, is crafting a plan to stabilize banks and financial institutions.
Skepticism on Wall Street persists: The Dow Jones industrial average dropped nearly 300 points Tuesday. Yet the president cast the stimulus, the first major piece of legislation passed on his watch, as a crucial milestone.
“I don’t want to pretend that today marks the end of our economic problems,” he told a crowd of supporters before signing the bill. “Nor does it constitute all of what we’re going to have to do to turn our economy around. But today does mark the beginning of the end, the beginning of what we need to do to create jobs for Americans scrambling in the wake of layoffs.”
He portrayed the stimulus as “the most sweeping economic-recovery package in our history.”
Still, it might not be enough.
Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs, aboard Air Force One en route to Denver, would not rule out a push for another stimulus. “I wouldn’t foreclose it,” Gibbs said, “but I wouldn’t say at the same time that we are readily making plans to do so.”
The White House staged the ceremony in Denver to underscore how the stimulus might help struggling cities recover. Unemployment in the Denver area stands at 6.3 percent, and home foreclosures here numbered more than 1,000 in December. A state-by-state estimate issued by the White House on Tuesday predicted that the stimulus would produce or save 59,000 jobs in Colorado.
Back in Washington, the partisan tone flared anew. House Republican leader John Boehner predicted that the measure would miss the mark.
“The flawed bill the president will sign today is a missed opportunity, one for which our children and grandchildren will pay a hefty price,” said Boehner, R-Ohio. He added, “The Democratic Congress produced a trillion-dollar, special-interest, pork-laden, partisan, backroom deal that will do little to get our economy back on track.”
Normally the White House is careful about managing public expectations, cautioning that a full economic recovery could take years. But in his remarks Tuesday, the president made ample use of superlatives. He cited provisions in the stimulus plan intended to ensure that people who lose their jobs don’t also lose their medical coverage — part of a series of health-care initiatives that, taken together, “have done more in 30 days to advance the cause of health-care reform than this country has done in an entire decade,” Obama said.
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