President Barack Obama, in the first nationally televised evening news conference of his young presidency, demanded that lawmakers pass an $800-billion-plus economic recovery plan, or risk turning «a crisis into a catastrophe.» The administration and Congress were both moving on parallel tracks Tuesday toward a new round of heavy intervention to pull the U.S. economy out of its recessionary spiral. The Treasury Department planned to announce Tuesday a revamped bank rescue plan, one calling for a stepped-up role by private investors. And an $838 billion stimulus bill was headed for expected Senate approval after clearing a critical procedural hurdle Monday. On a day of high economic activity, Obama was headed Tuesday to Fort Myers, Florida, a metropolitan area among the hardest-hit by mortgage foreclosures, for another town-hall meeting like the one he held Monday in Elkhart, Indiana. As part of his campaign to build public support for quick passage of his economic stimulus plan, the president took his message to a nationwide audience watching his news conference live during television's prime evening viewing hours. In opening remarks Monday night, he said the federal government «is the only entity left with the resources to jolt our economy back to life.» «The plan is not perfect,» the president said. «No plan is. I can't tell you for sure that everything in this plan will work exactly as we hope, but I can tell you with complete confidence that a failure to act will only deepen this crisis as well as the pain felt by millions of Americans.» The Treasury Department was ready to announce how it will spend the remaining $350 billion of the $700 billion financial rescue program started by the Bush administration last fall. The plan envisions big investors buying more than $1 trillion in troubled assets from the banks, according to congressional staffers briefed on the plan Monday night by Treasury officials. Obama depicted his administration's rewrite of the bank bailout effort as a template for «restoring market confidence.» «The credit crisis is real, and it's not over,» Obama said.
