Economic chief says U.S. moving ahead

WASHINGTON, July 17 (UPI) -- Extracting the U.S. economy from recession and establishing a foundation for growth remain the administration's priorities, a top Obama adviser said.

"The president was clear from the beginning that these two tasks needed to be dovetailed -- that confidence in our ability to rescue the economy depended on a sense of our commitment to reform and a vision for rebuilding," National Economic Council director Larry Summers said Friday in a speech before the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.

Summers used his appearance to offer a progress report on economic policy and the Obama administration's efforts to rescue and rebuild the U.S. economy.

The country was on "the brink of catastrophe" when 2009 began, Summers said, "but we have walked some substantial distance back from the abyss."

A reinvigorated U.S. economy must focus more on exports, the environment, new technologies, healthcare reform and middle-class growth, he said, and less on consumption, fossil-fuel energy and income growth that favors the few.

"Yes, the president has an ambitious agenda," Summers said. "But it is an agenda comprised of measures that lay a foundation for future prosperity and for the confidence on which the current recovery depends."