Obama hopes to sign 825-bln-dlr stimulus plan in less than a month

"I am pleased to say that both parties in Congress are already hard at work on this plan, and I hope to sign it into law in less than a month," Obama said in his first weekly radio address as president.

He warned that the economic problems would not recede in a short period of time, but expressed confidence that bold action will help put the country back on track.

"If we act as citizens and not partisans and begin again the work of remaking America, then I have faith that we will emerge from this trying time even stronger and more prosperous than we were before," Obama said.

The comments came after U.S. unemployment claims hit a 26-year high and home building fell to half-century lows, highlighting the scale of the challenge faced by the new U.S. administration.

The Labor Department reported Thursday that the number of initial unemployment claims in the week that ended January 17 soared to 589,000, the highest level since November 1982.

Last year, the US economy lost a total of 2.6 million jobs, propelling the national unemployment rate to a 16-year high of 7.2 percent.

Meanwhile, the number of housing starts plunged in December from the month before by 15.5 percent to an annualized rate of 550,000 units, according to the Commerce Department.

Obama warned that if nothing was done, the unemployment rate could reach double digits and the U.S. economy could fall one trillion dollars short of its full capacity.

But he argued that his stimulus plan, which aims to boost production while creating or retaining between three and four million jobs, would inject new life into the shrinking economy.

He said his proposal was not "just be a short-term program to boost employment.

"Its one that will invest in our most important priorities like energy and education; health care and a new infrastructure that are necessary to keep us strong and competitive in the 21st century," he said.

The project dubbed American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan calls for doubling the U.S. capacity to generate energy from alternative sources like wind, solar and biofuels over the next three years.

It provides for building a new electricity grid, including laying down more than 3,000 miles of transmission lines.

Obama also proposes computerizing the nation’s health records in five years, renovating and modernizing 10,000 schools and rebuilding the country’s infrastructure.

Broadband access to the Internet will be given to millions of Americans who currently lack it.

The 825-billion-dollar stimulus package is currently being considered by Congress, and Obama met Friday with both Democratic and Republican congressional leaders to facilitate its passage.

But the opposition Republicans said they were concerned about the size of the package, saying it could seriously aggravate the budget deficit, which is projected by the Congressional Budget Office to reach a whopping 1.1 trillion dollars in fiscal 2009.

The Republicans are promoting their own stimulus plan, which calls for cutting individual tax rates, tax deductions for small businesses and a ban on tax increases, but they lack the votes in either the Senate or the House of Representatives to block the Obama initiative.

In his address, Obama tried to assure skeptics that he did not intend to, as he put it, "just throw money at our problems."

He promised all spending decisions will be made public and his administration will be fully accountable.

"We will launch an unprecedented effort to root out waste, inefficiency and unnecessary spending in our government, and every American will be able to see how and where we spend taxpayer dollars by going to a new website called recovery.gov," he said.

The president will meet with his economic team later Saturday to discuss the government’s budgetary priorities.