U.S. President Barack Obama says it will take an international effort
to repair the global economy, and that his administration is doing
everything it can to reduce the huge U.S. budget deficit.
At a White House news conference Tuesday evening, Mr. Obama said the
U.S. dollar is strong because the United States has the strongest
economy in the world. He said that at the G-20 economic meeting in
London next month, his message will be that nations need to do whatever
is necessary to create jobs, avoid protectionism, and get the global
economy moving.
For the United States, Mr. Obama said it is important to start
including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the national budget,
because without being honest about the cost of the wars, the government
cannot rein in spending. He also said the nation must make tough
choices to cut the national deficit in half by the end of his first
term.
Regarding troubled insurance conglomerate American International Group,
Mr. Obama said the nation does not have the tools it needs to take over
a company like AIG now and bail it out of its economic woes. He said
the government needs to obtain the authority to do so.
The president took a question about his decision to lift restrictions
on federally funded embryonic stem cell research. He said he believes
the guidelines his administration provided for use of stem cells for
research meet ethical tests.
President Obama also addressed homelessness in the United States,
saying it is important to work with the states to identify at-risk
people and keep them from, in his words, "falling through the cracks."
He was asked whether the issue of race has affected his presidency. Mr.
Obama, the nation's first African-American president, said Americans
may have had justifiable pride on Inauguration Day in taking a step
beyond the nation's legacy of racial discrimination. But he said that
mood lasted only a day before the focus switched to the nation's
economic woes.