US President Barack Obama defended the spending outlined in his budget Tuesday, saying investments in health care, energy and education are essential to long-term economic growth and eventually bringing deficits under control. Obama defended the 3.6-trillion-dollar budget proposal. "What we've said is, let's make the investments that ensure that we meet our growth targets that put us on a pathway to growth as opposed to a situation in which we're not making those investments and we still have trillion-dollar deficits," Obama said in the second primetime news conference of his presidency. Obama also said his 787-billion dollars economic stimulus and efforts to unlock the credit crunch behind the financial crisis that dragged the economy into a recession are beginning to work, according to a report of DPA. --MORE
