Obama: Let's wait on 2nd stimulus

WASHINGTON, June 23 (UPI) -- We need time to evaluate the effectiveness of the economic stimulus package before considering a second boost, U.S. President Barack Obama said Tuesday.

Obama acknowledged "nobody understood what the depths of this recession were going to look like" when the first stimulus package was passed weeks after he took office in January.

"If you recall, it was only significantly later that we suddenly get a report that the economy had tanked," Obama said. "(It's) not surprising, then, that we missed the mark in terms of our estimates of where unemployment would go."

It was "pretty clear" that unemployment will top 10 percent, Obama said, "because of the fact that even after employers and businesses start investing again and start hiring again, typically it takes a while for that employment number to catch up with economic recovery," Obama said.

His job, he said, was to ensure focus on the short term -- providing families immediate relief and jump-start the economy as quickly as possible -- while keeping an eye on the long term by reforming healthcare system, enacting energy legislation that makes the United States a clean-energy economy, revamping the educational system and reforming the financial regulatory system.

"(By) doing all those things we've got a foundation for long-term economic growth," Obama said, "and we don't end up having to juice up the economy artificially through the kinds of bubble strategies that helped to get us in the situation that we're in today."

He praised the U.S. House for proceeding with "historic legislation" to build a clean-energy economy.

The energy bill would create incentives to spur development of new energy sources and energy savings to "finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy," he said, and will lead to new jobs that can't be outsourced overseas.

"The legislation is paid for by "the polluters who currently emit the dangerous carbon emissions that contaminate the water we drink and pollute the air we breathe," he said.