Obama’s anger

To rally more public support to push the stimulus package through the Congress, Obama even returned to campaign tactics by speaking directly to the recession-weary American people.

"The situation we face could not be more serious. We have inherited an economic crisis as deep and as dire as any since the Great Depression," said Obama at Tuesday's gathering.

"We find ourselves in a rare moment where the citizens of our country and all countries are watching and waiting for us to lead," he also warned Monday night at his first prime-time news conference since taking office.

Obama stressed it is only government that can "break the vicious cycle," where lost jobs lead to people spending less money, which leads to even more layoffs.

The Labor Department reported last week that the unemployment rate rose to 7.6 percent in January, the highest level since 1992, as employers slashed 598,000 jobs.

The US economy has lost a staggering 3.6 million jobs since December 2007, when the recession began. And about one-half of this decline occurred in the past three months.

Obama hopes the expensive stimulus plan will create or save 3 million to 4 million jobs and help revive the economy, which has been in recession since December 2007.

"What Americans expect from Washington is action that matches the urgency they feel in their daily lives, action that's swift, bold and wise enough for us to climb out of this crisis," a clearly frustrated Obama wrote in last week's Washington Post.

He charged Republicans with promoting a failed theory: "the notion that tax cuts alone will solve all our problems; that we can meet our enormous tests with half-steps and piecemeal measures; that we can ignore fundamental challenges such as energy independence and the high cost of health care and still expect our economy and our country to thrive."

An editorial in last week's New York Times agree with Obama's tough attitude with Congressional Republicans.

"Mr. Obama made concessions on the House version of the economy plan, and no Republican voted for it," said the editorial, warning: "No filibuster on this urgent bill could withstand the certain public outrage."

For Obama, the challenge has been to figure out how best to play the politics of an economic crisis that threatens the well-being of millions of Americans, said the US media.

Some Democratic strategists believe that Obama should not have waited until this week to go out into the country to speak directly to the American people.

"His problem is he was trying to sell it on the Hill first," said Peter Fenn, a Democratic communications specialist.

"I think it would have been smarter for him to go out around the country, maybe taking key Republican senators and members of Congress on the plane to various states," he added.