Obama say tough economy means 'more will be lost'

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama is warning that "more will be lost" during a recession that has already cost millions of Americans their homes and their jobs.

Marking 100 days in office, Obama was holding a prime-time news conference on Wednesday. The White House released excerpts of his opening statement in advance.

Obama said he is content with his administration's progress to fix a staggering economy. But he said big problems remain: the slow flow of credit, the struggling auto industry, the projected long-term deficits and security threats ranging from terrorism to pandemic flu.

He promised an unyielding effort to boost the nation's economy and security "You can expect an unrelenting, unyielding effort from this administration to strengthen our prosperity and our security in the second hundred days, and the third hundred days, and all the days after," the president said in opening the news conference.

Obama also has put the country on track to end the Iraq war, while escalating the one in Afghanistan and revamping the strategy there.

In fact, nearly every day since Obama's Jan. 20 inauguration has brought a sweeping new promise to upend business as usual, veering from big issues to small and back.

The reward: strong public backing despite a still-staggering economy. An Associated Press-GfK poll shows that 48 percent of Americans believe the United States is headed in the right direction -- the first time in years that more people than not expressed optimism for a brighter future.

But most of what Obama has done so far, as would be expected for little more than three months, amounts to no more than a down payment.

The president stressed this theme during his speech and short question-and-answer session in a St. Louis suburb.

"Our progress has to be measured in the results that we achieve over many months and years, not the minute-by-minute talk in the media," he told a friendly crowd at a local high school. "I'm not a miracle worker."

For instance, he has begun redefining the U.S. image around the globe, a combination of his fresh look and diplomatic outreach. But those efforts will take time to bear fruit in the most difficult places, such as Iran, North Korea, Russia, Cuba and the Sudan.

Obama also said he'll close the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But he has yet to confront the tough decisions about where to send the most problematic suspected terrorists being held there.

Most notably, Obama insisted that the massive but short-term economic stimulus that has increased the federal deficit would be unwise without a commitment to belt-tightening and a long-term reshaping of the U.S. economy.

So he has proposed an all-at-once agenda that includes increased education spending to produce a better-trained work force, greater support for renewable energy development, a high-priced system for companies to buy and sell rights to emit dangerous pollutants, a vast expansion of health insurance and new rules to rein in the riskiest Wall Street behavior. He has asked Congress to provide it all by the end of the year.

"Some of the people in Washington have been surprised," Obama said. "They said, 'Boy, he's so ambitious. He's been trying to do so much.' ... But there's no mystery to what we've done. The priorities that we've acted upon were the things that we said we'd do during the campaign."

Democrats in Congress gave Obama a 100-day present by advancing a $3.4 trillion federal budget for next year. The nonbinding budget blueprint, adopted in the House and awaiting a Senate vote later in the day, amounted to a first step in Obama's goal of providing health care coverage for all Americans because it gives Democrats the option of blocking any Republican filibuster on the president's health care plan.

Vice President Joe Biden said health care is "the top of the agenda, the very top" for the president this year. In a conference call with regional reporters, Biden said a broad immigration overhaul, once a top priority for the administration's first 100 days, may not happen this year.

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