Obama reassures U.S. in speech to Congress

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama urged the nation on Tuesday to see the economic crisis as reason to raise its ambitions, calling for expensive new efforts to address energy, health care and education programs even as he warned that more money might be needed to bail out banks.

In his first address to a joint session of Congress, Obama mixed an acknowledgment of the depth of the economic problems with a Reaganesque exhortation to American resilience and an expansive agenda with a pledge to begin paring down a soaring budget deficit.

"While our economy may be weakened and our confidence shaken, though we are living through difficult and uncertain times, tonight I want every American to know this," Obama said. "We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before."

He was greeted in the House of Representatives chamber with gregarious applause, particularly from Democrats who hold a strong majority. Yet even Republicans leaned in close to Obama as he passed by them in the narrow aisle and made his way to the speaker's dais at the front of the room.

Obama said he came to the Capitol not only to address members of the House and Senate who were seated before him but also to "speak frankly and directly to the men and women who sent us here."

"If we're honest with ourselves, we'll admit that for too long, we have not always met these responsibilities — as a government or as a people," Obama said. "I say this not to lay blame or look backwards, but because it is only by understanding how we arrived at this moment that we'll be able to lift ourselves out of this predicament."

A failure to confront the nation's dependence on foreign oil, deal with the rising cost of health care or find a solution to the decline of American schools contributed to the place the country finds itself in, Obama said. He renewed his call for investments in all areas, particularly finding a way to create energy resources that do not rely on foreign sources of oil.

Obama, following through on a campaign pledge, challenged Congress to pass a bill to cap greenhouse gas emissions that are heating the planet and use $15 billion a year of the revenues from the program to pay for renewable sources of energy.