House Ways and Means Committee ranking member Dave Camp, a Republican, said Wednesday that the stimulus could create a short-term boon, but a long-term drag on the economy.

"Just so everybody knows, in 10 years the economy will be worse off, with less jobs," he said.

"This is not the smart approach," echoed Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. "The taxpayers of today and tomorrow will be left to clean up the mess."

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

In an address in Fort Myers, Florida, a city suffering a lot from the economic crisis, 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 U.S. 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.

"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."

A statement released by Republican Senator Charles Grassley saying that the bill would put future generations in debt, also angered Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

"No one needs to lecture me or us on deficits, because you invented them," Reid said to Republicans on Wednesday, invoking the Bush years and the war in Iraq.

No silver bullet

Former Trade Representative Carla Hills welcomed the package. "I think what we should do is to give our economy a jolt, and importantly, give our consumers and our businesses a vote of confidence, so consumers come back to the market, and the businesses are able to produce for that market," she told Xinhua.

Despite a growing sense of urgency, many economists across the political spectrum still believe the massive bill might reduce the damages caused by the current economic crisis, but could not quickly pull the U.S. economy out of its downward spiral.

Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist at the Columbia University and former chief economist at the World Bank, said that the stimulus package was "probably too little, especially given that it is badly designed (and) we haven't yet fixed the mortgage problem so the financial sector is likely to continue bleeding."

Leading U.S. business groups also scolded the "Buy American" provisions, which prohibit the purchase of foreign iron, steel and manufactured goods for any stimulus-funded infrastructure project, warning it would delude the bill's impact and lead to a global trade war.

"The 'Buy American' provisions ... will signal to our trading partners around the world that the U.S. is returning to the bad old days of protectionism and economic nationalism," Gary Shapiro, president of the Consumer Electronics Association, said in a statement.

According to the bill, first-time home buyers would receive an 8,000 dollar tax credit, and they wouldn't have to repay the government later as is required for the current 7,500 dollar credit.

"The home buyer tax credit is a plus for the housing market, but only a small plus," said Moody's Economy.com Chief Economist Mark Zandi.

"The credit .. covers only a part of the down payment needed to make a purchase. The housing market will take any help it can get, but it needs more," he added.

The Obama administration also acknowledged the difficulty. "Passing this plan is a critical step, but as important as it is, it's only the beginning of what, I think, all of you understand is going to be a long and difficult process of turning our economy around," said Obama on Friday.

The president told reporters earlier this week that his administration, which he said inherited a deficit of over 1 trillion dollars and "the most profound economic emergency since the Great Depression," should pay much attention to greater deficits.

"Those are deficits that could turn a crisis into a catastrophe, and I refuse to let that happen," Obama said.

"This work will not be easy, our recovery will likely be measured in years but not months. And all of us, government, business, labor, and citizens, will have responsibilities to meet," the president noted.

Larry Summers, director of the White House National Economic Council, warned that the country's economic woes didn't happen overnight and that it's "going to take time to fix."

"It is going to take time to work this through," Summers said. "We're not promising that you're going to see some miracle cure, some silver bullet for the economy."

(Xinhua News Agency Feburary 14, 2009)