WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama's first speech to Congress will be a broad look at the agenda for the year ahead. But it comes during a daily drumbeat of depressing economic news.
Obama will paint a sobering picture of a contracting economy Tuesday night. He will say the new spending and tax cuts he's using to fight the recession must be coupled with efforts to curb the soaring deficit.
Obama also will range far beyond the economy to challenges like reforming health care, seeking new energy sources, improving education and holding down the costs of Social Security and Medicare. And he will talk about plans to shift troops from Iraq to Afghanistan.
The speech will have all the same trappings as a State of the Union address. It comes two days before he delivers a budget blueprint to Congress.
CBS News coerage of the President's address begins at 9:00pm Tuesday
Gibbs says Obama to offer straight talk
WASHINGTON (AP) - His spokesman says President Barack Obama will be "honest about where we are" when he speaks tonight to Congress.
Robert Gibbs tells MSNBC that Obama will be talking frankly about the challenges facing the country. He says Obama will note that "it took us a long time to get here and it's going to take us a long time to get out."
But he also says Obama will tell the country that Americans have faced greater challenges before, and have always met those challenges.
Even amid a surge in spending aimed at stimulating the economy, Obama is promising to cut deficits in half by the end of his first term. And Gibbs says the "biggest" step toward that goal will be
cutting the amount that is spent every year in Iraq.
(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
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