US PRESIDENT Barack Obama has described his first 100 days in office as “fruitful” but acknowledged that his administration has a lot of work to do in combating the recession and rebalancing the US economy.
The president told a town-hall meeting in Missouri that he was pleased with the progress he had made but not satisfied, and that he was confident about the future but not content with the present.
“We have begun to pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off, and we’ve begun the work of remaking America,” he said.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do because, on our first day in office, we found challenges of unprecedented size and scope. These challenges could not be met with half-measures.
“They couldn’t be met with the same old formulas. They couldn’t be confronted in isolation. They demanded action that was bold and sustained.”
Earlier, Mr Obama welcomed to the White House Pennsylvania senator Arlen Specter (79), who this week defected from the Republicans to the Democrats.
The senator’s move brings the Democrats close to a 60-seat majority in the Senate, allowing the party to block procedural steps that delay legislation.
A Minnesota court is due to rule within the next few weeks on the outcome of last November’s Senate race between incumbent Republican Norm Coleman and Democrat Al Franken.
Mr Franken is ahead in the recount and Democrats are confident that the court will declare him the winner, giving the party its 60th senator.
The last time either party enjoyed a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate was in 1977 and 1978, when Jimmy Carter was president.
Mr Specter’s defection highlights the Republicans’ decline in the northeast of the US, where the party now has only three out of 18 Senate seats and just 15 out of 83 members of the House of Representatives.
Mr Obama, who has promised to campaign for Mr Specter in next year’s Pennsylvania Senate election, said he expected the Democrats’ newest senator to retain his political independence.
“I don’t expect Arlen to be a rubber stamp. I don’t expect any member of Congress to be a rubber stamp,” Mr Obama said.
“In fact, I’d like to think that Arlen’s decision reflects a recognition that this administration is open to many different ideas and many different points of view; that we seek co-operation and common ground; and that in these 100 days we’ve begun to move this nation in the right direction.”
The president received a further political boost yesterday when the House of Representatives approved a $3.4 trillion (€2.56 trillion) budget outline that endorses much of Mr Obama’s agenda. The Bill was passed by 233 votes to 193, without a single Republican supporting it.
The Senate was expected to vote on the measure last night.
Opinion polls show two out of three Americans approving of Mr Obama’s performance as president. But Mr Obama told the Missouri audience that, whether they agreed with him or not, he was doing in office what he had promised during the campaign.
“The changes that we’ve made are the changes we promised. We’re doing what we said we’d do,” he said.
“My campaign was possible because the American people wanted change. I ran for president because I wanted to carry those voices, your voices, with me to Washington.
“So I just want everybody to understand you’re who I’m working for every single day in the White House.
“I’ve heard your stories. I know you sent me to Washington because you believed in the promise of a better day. And I don’t want to let you down.”