World Business

WASHINGTON President Barack Obama is urging explanation members of Congress to write tough new financial industry regulations to prevent crises and protect consumers.

Watch original video:

Obama called for new accountability, transparency and trust in the monetary markets. Among his main principles for the legislation, he uttered, is that government better monitor the scale and space of risks that institutions take.

The president made his remarks Wednesday after meeting with the top Democrats and Republicans from the couple House and Senate committees that will take the lead in writing the legislation. Central to the new regulatory effort are the unregulated esoteric financial instruments that have been blamed for Wall Street’session over-familiar fall latest year.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon because of farther on knowledge of facts. AP’s earlier story is below.

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama is calling on Congress to pass strong financial sector law and blunder to prevent future crises and restore “accountability, transparency and trust in our financial markets.”

In remarks prepared for delivery Wednesday afternoon, the president offers not at all specific regulatory framework, nevertheless calls for “core principles.” Among them are consumer protections, accountability as antidote to executives and a regulatory plan that covers a broad succession of financial transactions that have escaped regulation in the past.

Obama was scheduled to proper Wednesday with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and with the chairmen and ranking Republicans of the House and Senate committees that would have existence charged with drafting the regulations.

“Let me be clear: the choice we external aspect is not betwixt an cruel government-run economy and a chaotic and unforgiving capitalism,” Obama says, according to remarks obtained by the Associated Press. “Rather, strong financial markets require clear rules of the road, not to hinder financial institutions, but to protect consumers and investors.”

An administration official before-mentioned Obama wants Congress to work without ceasing the regulatory look into in the next several weeks, before April’s meeting of the world’s 20 major economies. The official spoke on the situation of anonymity because the Wednesday session had not yet occurred.

“We be necessitated to recognize that the challenges we face are not just American challenges, they are global challenges,” Obama says, according to the prepared excerpts. “So as we work to set high regulatory standards here in the U.S., we new wine challenge the earth to do the same.”

Among those scheduled to go with Wednesday’s assembly at the White House is House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank. The Massachusetts Democrat has already begun working on legislation that would establish a regulator to oversee the kind of systemic risks that led to the market free fall last year.

Frank has proposed that the task be placed in the hands of the Federal Reserve. In the Senate, the chairman of the Banking Committee, Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, has been cooler to the exemplar of placing that oversight with the Fed.

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2008766966_apobamabanks.html?syndication=rss

WASHINGTON Governments that obtain donations of Ten Commandments displays and other monuments for public parks are not compelled to take everything they are offered, a unanimous Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.

Watch original video:

The pay one’s addresses to said that a small religious group, the Summum, cannot force Pleasant Grove City, Utah, to place its granite marker in a park that has been home to a Ten Commandments monument with respect to 38 years.

Officials prepare not violate free speech rights when they cast off requests to display monuments, Justice Samuel Alito said in his opinion for the seek.

“It is hard to imagine how a public park could be opened up for the installation of permanent monuments by every person or group wishing to engage in that conformation of expression,” Alito reported.

The court reversed a ruling of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver that the city’sitting decision violated the Summum’sitting rights. The Salt Lake City-based clump argued that a city have power to’t allow some private donations of displays in its public park and reject others.

Alito distinguished the Summum’s case from efforts to prevent people from declamation in public parks, which commonly would violate the First Amendment’s deliver speech guarantee.

Alito uttered “the extend of a permanent memorial in a public park” requires a different analysis.

Because monuments in public parks help define a city’s identity, “cities and other jurisdictions derive some care in accepting donated monuments,” he said.

Brian Barnard, the Summum’s lawyer in Salt Lake City, said the group would persist to press its specific instance against Pleasant Grove City by arguing that governments can’t favor one religion above another.

“That is what Pleasant Grove has done. The city has adopted as their own the religions tenets of the Ten Commandments and given those precepts a prominent display in their public park,” Barnard said.

But Justice Antonin Scalia, in a separate esteem that was joined by means of Justice Clarence Thomas, said the Utah circumstance was much same the Ten Commandments display on the grounds of the Texas State Capitol in Austin that the court upheld in 2005.

“There are excessively good reasons to be confident that the park displays do not violate any part of the First Amendment,” Scalia said. “The city can in close custody exhale.”

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2008784181_apscotusreligiousdisplay.html?syndication=rss

WASHINGTON The Democratic-controlled House approved $410 billion legislation Wednesday that boosted home programs, bristled with earmarks and chipped away at policies left behind by the Bush management. The suffrage was 245-178, largely onward party lines.

Watch original video:

Republicans assailed the measure as also costly - individually on the heels of a $787 billion stimulus bill that President Barack Obama signed last week. But Democrats jabbed back.

“The similar people who flock the economy into the ditch are now complaining about the size of the tow luggage,” said Rep. James McGovern, D-Mass., pointing out the large be augmented in deficits that President George W. Bush and GOP-controlled Congresses amassed.

From the GOP side, Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas said the legislation was “going to grow the government 8.3 percent … but the family budget which has to pay for the federal budget only grew at 1.3 percent last year.”

The debate occurred one sunshine after Obama told Congress in a prime delivery television address that he intends to cut deficits in half over the next four years, and one day before he submits tax and spending plans for the coming year. Given the extraordinary costs of the financial industry bailout and the stimulus, the White House projects this year’s packet shortfall exercise volition be $1.5 trillion, triple the previous record of $455 billion in 2008.

In a symbolic bow to the recession, Democrats included in the spending just degree a prohibition on a cost-of-living increase for members of Congress for the year.

Overall, the legislation would provided increases of roughly 8 percent for the federal agencies it covered, about $32 billion more than last year.

The bill is intended to allow smooth functioning of the government through the Sept. 30 end of the fiscal year. The Senate has yet to vote on its version.

After persuading lawmakers to keep earmarks off the stimulus bill, Obama made no such attempt on the first non-emergency spending apportion of his presidency. The result was that lawmakers claimed billions in treaty funds in spite of pet projects - a total of 8,570 earmarks at a cost of $7.7 billion, according to Taxpayers as antidote to Common Sense. Majority Democrats declined to provide a count of earmarks, but before-mentioned the cost was far smaller, $3.8 billion, 5 percent less than a year ago.

Among the earmarks was one sponsored through Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., who secured $200,000 since a “tattoo removal ravishment outreach program” in Los Angeles. Aides said the money would pay for a beat of drum deprivation of office machine that could second gang members or others shed conspicuous signs of their past, and anyone benefiting would be required to perform community service.

Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., said the bill included at least a dozen earmarks as being clients of PMA Group, a lobbying company at present at the center of a federal contamination investigation.

“It’sitting simply not responsible to grant a soon-to-be-criminally indicted lobbying compressed to reach funding, all borrowed, in this bill,” he said. No charges accept been filed against the firm or its principals, although the company’s offices were raided earlier this month, and it has announced plans to disband by the end of the month.

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2008783223_apcongressspending.html?syndication=rss

Watch original video:

SEOUL, South Korea

Analysts called the announcement yet another bid for President Obama’s attention as he met Tuesday in Washington with Prime Minister Taro Aso of Japan, a key ally in the regional push to get North Korea to give up its nuclear program.

North Korea’s declaration came just days after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, on a trip to Asia, urged the country to put an end to “provocative actions.”

The U.N. Security Council passed a resolution prohibiting North Korea from engaging in any ballistic activity after a missile launch in 2006. North Korea could face additional sanctions if it violates the resolution.

The country hinted at a plan to launch a satellite last week when it marked leader Kim Jong Il’s 67th birthday by asserting North Korea’s right to develop a peaceful space program

A statement carried Tuesday by state-run Korean Central News Agency said “preparations for launching experimental communications satellite Kwangmyongsong-2 by means of delivery rocket Unha-2 are now making brisk headway” at a launch site in Hwadae County in the northeast.

North Korea test-fired a ballistic missile over Japan in 1998, a launch the regime also claimed was a satellite.

Hwadae was the site for the 2006 test launch of North Korea’s longest-range missile, the Taepodong-2, which has the potential to reach Alaska. Reports suggest the missile being readied for launch could be an advanced version of the Taepodong-2 with even greater range.

It probably won’t be clear if the latest launch is a satellite or a missile test until footage can be analyzed after the event.

Intelligence officials reported activity at the site but no sign of a rocket on the launchpad, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said Tuesday. The satellite announcement comes amid heightened tensions on the Korean peninsula.

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak has pledged to end a decade of unconditional handouts for the nuclear-armed neighbor, while the North has ramped up its anti-Lee rhetoric, warning that the Koreas are headed for a military clash.

Relations between the two countries improved as previous South Korean leaders sought to coax the impoverished North to the negotiating table with warm words and unconditional aid.

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2008782670_korea25.html?syndication=rss

Watch original video:

RALEIGH, N.C.

U.S. Attorney George Holding said Tuesday that federal magistrates have launched an international examine for the charged with execution charged with rushing shipments of bacteria-contaminated syringes from an AM2PAT plant. Two former plant workers who by stipulation prosecutors minor circumstances about the plant’s operations have pleaded guilty for their roles in shipping tainted syringes.

The syringes contained Heparin, a common ancestry thinner, and saline, and were recalled in December 2007 after an outbreak of illnesses. Health inspectors identified bacterial infections in Colorado, Texas, Illinois and Florida.

Heparin and salt are used to flow intravenous lines during cancer treatments, kidney dialysis and other procedures.

The U.S. attorney uttered investigators believe AM2PAT CEO Dushyant Patel has fled to his unartificial India. Patel was indicted last week on 10 charges including fraud, false statements and selling adulterated medical devices.

“Our office is committed to pursuing him and bringing him in the present life to account for his actions,” Holding before-mentioned. “We’re putting all resources profitable to bringing him back here.”

Holding did not know who Patel’s attorney was.

AM2PAT is based in Chicago and had a subsidiary in North Carolina.

Patel’s company sold intimately $7 million worth of heparin and saline syringes in 2006-07. Prosecutors said the facility in Angier, about 20 miles southward of Raleigh, cut corners and failed to come rules for checking sterility. They too said manufacturing dates were falsified to make it be in sight that safeguards were followed.

The scheme led to bacterial infections in 200 to 300 patients around the country, some of them resulting in spinal meningitis and permanent brain damage, prosecutors said. Even more people may have become infected.

“One of the worst things in various places this inflection is that the people who were taking briny and Heparin, they’re usually affected with nausea already or have some debilitative illness and need these medicines to try to get well,” Holding said. “Sometimes it’s hard to find out whether they were killed from the tainted Heparin or whether it was the original illness. We’re not able to say any more than five.”

Patel said about a year past when federal officials were investigating the outbreak that company voluntarily recalled the implicated syringes and there was “no degree out there anymore.”

Plant manager Aniruddha Patel, 43, of Carpentersville, Ill., and quality-control director Ravindra Kumar Sharma, 54, of Richmond, Va., each were sentenced Monday in U.S. District Court in Raleigh to 4

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/health/2008782675_syringe25.html?syndication=rss

Watch original video:

Microsoft reiterated its belief that the economic crisis will persist at least into the second half of 2009 but attempted to reassure analysts Tuesday that it decision continue to cut costs and spend wisely.

Speaking at a union in New York, Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer uttered Microsoft is looking to the television writer RCA as a role model. RCA spent money steady research and development through the Great Depression, then dominated its market, he said.

(In fact, RCA became unit of the country’s biggest conglomerates, but it also went a route Ballmer is unlikely to recommend for Microsoft: In the 1980s RCA was acquired by General Electric and then saw its consumer-electronics brand sold to Thomson of France.)

Ballmer pointed to areas of Microsoft’session business that will be strike hardest by the downturn and sketched out the products and projects that will get the bulk of the company’session $27.5 billion in annual operating expenses.

Microsoft, which recently resorted to its foremost mass layoffs, last will and testament feel the economic disquiet most acutely in its units that sell the Windows operating system and Office desktop software, Ballmer said.

Yet Microsoft plans to spend most heavily on those two segments as the company readies forthcoming versions, Windows 7 and Office 14, and pumps more money into advertising. Microsoft has reported it expects to release Windows 7 by means of January 2010.

The CEO also said Microsoft has poured resources into a new version of the Internet Explorer Web browser to reverse losses in market parcel out.

Ballmer addressed Microsoft’s strategy for “netbooks,” the brightest spot in today’s PC assiduity. Most of these inexpensive, low-powered laptops go proceed a basic version of Windows XP because its replacement system, Vista, requires too many computing supplies. Windows XP is inferior remunerative conducive to Microsoft, however, so the concourse has said that the well stocked versions of Windows 7 will work well on these small laptops.

Microsoft also will offer a version of Windows at the identical price as XP — most likely the pared-down Windows 7 Starter Edition — but it is also laboring on ways to persuade netbook buyers to pay other for full-featured Windows 7 versions.

The software maker will continue to fight Google instead of more of the Web search and advertising markets, even as Microsoft’s two high sea tries at improving its hand — beefing up its technology and bid since Yahoo — have largely flopped.

“You give up, you can’face to face get back in the game,” Ballmer said.

“We know we have to be responsible and reasonable about the total amount of money that we invest. I don’privately want to wind up being known as the Jerry Yang of this market,” he said, referring to the Yahoo co-founder who was cast out of the true course for example CEO after turning into a denser consistence Microsoft’s $47.5 billion acquisition bid and failing to reverse Yahoo’s fiscal slide.

Ballmer would yet probable to make a search-related pine plank with Yahoo that would result in more competition on this account that Google, and said Yahoo’s new management might help reopen talks. Investors sent Yahoo shares up 78 cents, or 6.5 percent, to $12.75 Tuesday. But Ballmer reiterated having no interest in acquiring all of Yahoo.

Microsoft shares closed Tuesday down 4 cents at $17.17.

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/microsoft/2008782590_microsoft25.html?syndication=rss

Watch original video:

Downtown Seattle, find to one’s mind almost everyplace else, took its relating to housekeeping lumps in 2008.

Washington Mutual disappeared. Other prominent employers laid right hand workers. Office and retail vacancy rates grew. The new-construction pipeline started to dry up.

Those discouraging developments were dutifully noted at the Downtown Seattle Association’sitting annual “State of Downtown” economic forum Tuesday.

But association President Kate Joncas devoted a great deal of of her address to what she called the “bright spots” that downtown can build steady as the economy recovers.

Among them:

• The emerging global-health industry, led by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute and others. It’session expected to add 2,400 more research and support jobs locally by 2012, Joncas said, and more than 1 million square feet of health-related office and lab space is under construction in greater downtown.

• Transportation. Completion this summer of Sound Transit’s primeval light-rail segment, voter approval last fall of every ambitious rail expansion and the recent agreement to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct with a bored tunnel every part of bode rightly for downtown, Joncas said.

Protecting transportation services and projects from cutbacks while governments grapple with budget deficits should be a priority, she added.

• Sports. Seattle may possess lost the SuperSonics, but “soccer is going to be elephantine,” Joncas aforesaid.

The expansion team Seattle Sounders FC has sold more than 20,000 season tickets. The team’session first match March 19 at Qwest Field elect be broadcast on ESPN. “We’re going to be on television around the cosmos,” Joncas said.

• Tourism and conventions. More cruise ships called on Seattle in 2008 than ever before. The Washington State Convention & Trade Center will host a record tell of conventions this year, and Joncas said it’s undivided of just four convention centers in the country that operates in the black. “We’re turning gone more business than we’re booking,” said Tom Norwalk, president of Seattle’s Convention and Visitors Bureau, who participated in a panel at Tuesday’s forum.

Legislative approval of a tax extension to expand the convention center is a top precedence for the Downtown Seattle Association, Joncas reported. She called the proposal “a great economic stimulus plan for downtown” and uttered it’s a notable the group plans to stay busy during the recession.

“We are not going to flatten ourselves up in a round body and die,” she said.

Eric Pryne: 206-464-2231 or epryne@seattletimes.com

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008782583_dsa25.html?syndication=rss

Watch original video:

WASHINGTON

In his highest address to a joint session of Congress, Obama mixed an recognizance of the depth of the economic problems with a Reaganesque exhortation to American resilience and an expansive agenda with a pledge to break the ice paring down a soaring budget shortage..

“While our economy may be weakened and our confidence shaken, although we are living through difficult and uncertain times, tonight I want every American to know this,” Obama said. “We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before.”

He was greeted in the House chamber through gregarious applause, particularly from Democrats who hold a robust majority. Yet even Republicans leaned in close to Obama as he passed by them in the narrow aisle and made his way to the speaker’s dais at the front of the occasion.

Obama said he came to the Capitol not only to address House and Senate members who were seated before him, goal also to “speak frankly and directly to the men and women who sent us here.”

“If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that for too long, we have not for ever met these responsibilities

A failure to be opposite to the nation’s reliance on foreign oil, deal with the insurrection cost of soundness like or procure a solution to the decline of schools contributed to the stronghold the country finds itself in, Obama said. He renewed his call for investments in every one of areas, particularly finding a way to occasion energy resources that do not rely on foreign sources of oil.

Greenhouse gases

Obama, following through on a campaign pledge, challenged Congress to pass a hedging-knife to pattern greenhouse-gas emissions that are stimulating the planet and use $15 billion a year of the revenues from the program to pay on the side of renewable sources of energy.

He said America was falling behind China, Germany, Japan and other nations in production and use of clean might, however challenged U.S. entrepreneurs to develop technology to make the United States a global leader in energy efficiency.

He was vague about how he intends to make health care more affordable and accessible, saying only that the budget he will release Thursday will make a down payment steady the limit of “quality, affordable health trouble for every American.”

On the campaign trail, he committed himself to many goals, including establishing a public insurance program to be rivals with private insurers, requiring employers to contribute to the cost of coverage according to their employees or to the require to be paid of the public figure and requiring that all children be under the necessity coverage.

Obama said he would cut the deficit in half by means of the end of his first limit, telling his audience for the first proper time that his direction has “already identified 2 trillion dollars in savings through the whole extent of the nearest decade.”

In an interview, an administration official said those savings reflected reduced spending in continuance the Iraq strife and higher revenues from letting the Bush superintendence’s load cuts in opposition to the wealthiest Americans lapse after 2010.

In his litany of proposals, Obama called for creating tax-free universal savings accounts for all Americans, a nod to Republicans to create investing. vehicles as they consider overhauling the Social Security program.

“My stock does not attempt to solve every problem or harangue every issue. It reflects the stark reality of what we’ve inherited

Anger acknowledged

Although Americans have been seeing a lot of Obama in the first 36 days of his presidency, the discourse Tuesday night gave him every opportunity to command the playhouse in a room for passing he had not yet done and served viewed like an early test of whether he will be able to persuade Republicans to support any pieces of his agenda.

Republican leaders in the House and Senate turned to a rising voice outside Washington, D.C., to respond to the application.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said Republicans also were focused on rebuilding the economy, but he criticized Democrats for turning to government programs

“Democratic leaders say their legislation determination grow the economy,” Jindal uttered. “What it will do is grow the government, greaten our taxes down the cover on the inside, and saddle subsequent time generations with debt. Who among us would ask our children for a lend, so we could spend standard of value we do not have, on things we do not need? That is precisely what the Democrats in Congress honest did. It’s irresponsible.”

Obama acknowledged the anger felt by many Americans over the bailouts of banks, the automobile companies and homeowners who are in over their heads. But he made a sheathe that all those steps were necessary, not to prevent the institutions or canaille receiving taxpayer money, but to preclude deeper economic problems that would afflict everyone for years to come.

At a time of push, he said, “we cannot impart to exercise authority out of anger, or yield to the politics of the moment.”

Obama sought to explain the program he announced last week to take part with some homeowners prevent foreclosure. He asked for understanding from Americans who have made their payments on time and who regard the bailout plan being of the kind which an dishonest reward to those who lived beyond their means. The president urged Americans to consider refinancing their homes, which he said could save nearly $2,000 on their mortgages.

On health care, Obama said, “Let there be no doubt: Health-care reform cannot wait, it must not wait, and it will not wait another year.”

The president waited until the last moments of his speech to address America’s relations with the creation.

He pledged to end the Iraq armed conflict of powers, disconcert al-Qaida and combat extremism in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He did not say how, leaving details to pending reviews under way on both Iraq and Afghanistan policy.

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2008783002_obama25.html?syndication=rss

Watch original video:

The numbers in Tuesday’sitting state jobs narrative were bad enough — the highest unemployment rate in greater quantity than two decades, more unemployed people than ever before, drops across nearly all business sectors and the prospect of even worse word in the months to come.

But during the time that chilly as the official statistics are, the state’s 7.8 percent unemployment rate for January doesn’t fully capture the impact of rising joblessness on the wider dispensation, including the majority of workers who still have jobs.

People who see jobs evaporating in other companies and other industries tend to catch back their own spending, economists pronounce — an understandable response, but the same that could drive down the limited economy but also further.

“The shoe may not hold dropped for people virtuous yet, but they be seized of this nagging sense of touch they might be next,” reported Joseph Phillips, dean of the Albers School of Business and Economics at Seattle University.

As a result, he said, “a lot of humbler classes feel they have to conduct themselves in a more austere manner.”

“They don’t go out to dinner, they stay home and cook instead, and what’s the outcome of that? People (moving) in restaurants have a hard time.”

Restaurants and bars, in fact, cut 700 jobs last month — a tenth of the 7,000-job drop in Washington’s nonfarm payrolls.

Along with declines in manufacturing, construction, the accusation sector and business services, those cuts helped push up the state’s estimated jobless reprimand to 7.8 percent.

The rate was estimated by the category Employment Security Department because of delays in implementing a repaired computer arrangement by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. All states, including Washington, use the bureau’s system to calculate local unemployment figures.

Still, you’issue have to go back to December 1986 to find a higher jobless rate. During the recession after the dot-com bust early this decade, unemployment peaked at 7.7 percent.

Mary Ayala, the Employment Security Department’session principal person economist, warned that many more jobs could be jeopardy.

Unless the state’s banking system stabilizes in the next six months and lending resumes at something approaching normal levels, she warned, “we could hit 12.5 percent very easily by the end of this year or early nearest year.”

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008782586_jobless25.html?syndication=rss

WASHINGTON —

Watch original video:

To a nation reeling from recession and facing long-festering problems, President Barack Obama has a simple reminder: “We are not quitters.”

Whatever the problems, the new president promised in the first prime-time speech of his term, “We disposition rebuild, we will recover and the United States of America enjoin emerge stronger than before.”

Standing before a joint session of Congress in continuance Tuesday ignorance, Obama optimistically sketched any agenda that began with jobs, then broadened quickly to include a indestructible credit system, better schools, health care reform, reliable domestic sources of activity and an end to the war in Iraq. Specifics will come, he said, although he conceded in greater numbers billions may be necessary to stabilize the banking system.

The president drew loud cheers as he made his way down the center aisle, again when he stood, alone, at the stylobate to speak, and several other thing times in an address delivered in a hall packed with lawmakers, members of his administration, Supreme Court justices and diplomats.

Humorous and poignant moments took their turns on a darkness when virtually the entire government gathered under one heavily secured roof.

As when Obama explained his decision to bear Vice President Joe Biden oversee implementation of his stimulus plan by saying, “Nobody messes with Joe.”

Or at what time he urged lawmakers to determine education legislation named in faction for Massachusetts’ Democratic Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, battling brain cancer. The 77-year-old lawmaker “has never stopped asking what he have power to confer in the place of his inhabitants,” Obama said, rephrasing an enduring line from President John F. Kennedy’s 1960 inaugural address.

Little to a greater degree than one month into the president’s term, the speech followed congressional passage of an $787 billion stimulus bill, coincided through unsettled proposals to stem an epidemic of pledge foreclosures and served as prelude to a budget Obama pledged will cut projected deficits in half by the agency of the end of his term.

The new president submits his tax and spending plans to Congress on Thursday.

With solid Democratic majorities in both houses, Obama can count on a trusty base of support of the same kind with he pushes his agenda. But his drive for bipartisanship depends in part on his stagnant in the polls - strong so far - and his speech was aimed at lawmakers as well as the viewing general body of mankind.

“What is required at that time is for this country to pull together, stand over against boldly the challenges we face, and tolerate bounden duty for our future once more,” he said.

Republicans said they were ready to toil with Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress - up to a point.

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2008778897_apobamaspeech.html?syndication=rss