StimulusBill.org

Obama signed the massive, nearly 1,100-page American Recovery and Reinvestment Act before an audience of 250 business and community leaders seated on folding chairs in an atrium of Denver’s Museum of Nature and Science. The setting was intended to underscore the new law’s role in creating clean-energy jobs. Before the signing, the president toured a solar panel installation on the museum’s roof.

“We have begun the essential work of keeping the American dream alive in our time,” he said. “Now, I don’t want to pretend that today marks the end of our economic problems. . . . But today does mark the beginning of the end, the beginning of what we need to do to create jobs for Americans scrambling in the wake of layoffs.”

Obama called the stimulus measure the most sweeping economic legislation passed in the nation’s history. He said the law will fund record investments in education, new energy research and new infrastructure — spending that he said will lay the foundation for the nation’s economic future. The package includes a $400 tax break for most individual workers and $800 for married couples, including those who do not earn enough to pay income taxes.

At the same time, the legislation expands social safety net programs and increases food stamp and child nutrition programs. There are also increased unemployment benefits and health care access for those thrown out of work.

Republicans sharply criticized the new law Tuesday, charging that it is heavily laden with pork-barrel spending and predicting that it will fall short of creating the promised level of new jobs while swelling the federal deficit.

The bill passed the House Friday by a vote of 246 to 183 and was approved that night in the Senate by 60 to 38. No House Republicans voted for the package. In the Senate, only three Republicans supported the bill, narrowly giving it a filibuster-proof majority and handing Obama a major legislative victory within his first month in office.

Obama said the legislation will save or create 3.5 million jobs over the next two years, pulling the nation back from the brink of what he has called a potential economic catastrophe. The measure aims to spur job growth through massive new investments in energy, transportation, education and health-care projects, while reviving social safety-net programs.

A little more than a third of the legislation’s price tag comes from tax cuts. The rest of the costs, about $507 billion, are from spending.

In part, the new law is intended to make good on Obama’s campaign pledges to upgrade the nation’s aging roads, bridges and electricity grid; overhaul and computerize medical record-keeping and develop alternative energy resources to fight global warming and reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

The bill includes nearly $50 billion for roads, bridges, transit and rail, including $8 billion for high-speed rail.

Calling the legislation “the most sweeping economic recovery package in our history,” Obama said it not only will create jobs but will start “doing the work that America needs done in critical areas that have been neglected for too long.”

“We can’t build our economic future on the transportation and communications networks of the past,” he said. Because of the stimulus package, he said, nearly 400,000 people will have jobs repairing roads, bridges and levees, installing broadband capability in rural areas, upgrading mass transit and building high-speed rail lines, he said.

Obama also cited the law’s provisions to rein in soaring health care costs, extend coverage to people who have lost their health care and expand wellness programs. Combined with the enactment earlier this month of a program to provide health insurance to millions of children, the new provisions mean that “we have done more in 30 days to advance the cause of health care reform than this country has done in an entire decade,” Obama said, drawing a standing ovation.

With the law’s energy provisions, he said, “we’re taking big steps down the road to energy independence.” He said the legislation includes investments that will double the amount of renewable energy produced in the United States over the next three years and will create “a newer, smarter electric grid that will allow for the broader use of alternative energy,” replacing a grid he said dates to the era of Thomas Edison.

Invoking the pledge of President John F. Kennedy to land a man on the moon, Obama said the package also includes the “biggest increase in basic research funding” in American history.

“Just as President Kennedy sparked an explosion of innovation when he set America’s sights on the moon, I hope this investment will ignite our imagination once more, spurring new discoveries and breakthroughs that will make our economy stronger, our nation more secure, and our planet safer for our children,” Obama said.

Calling the package “a balanced plan with a mix of tax cuts and investments,” he said it shuns “the usual pork barrel spending” and “will be implemented with an unprecedented level of transparency and accountability” to ensure that the money is well spent.

“As important as the step we take today is, this legislation represents only the first part of the broad strategy we need to address our economic crisis,” Obama cautioned. In the coming days and weeks, he said, he intends to launch other aspects of the strategy to “stabilize, repair and reform our banking system” and to “stem the spread of foreclosures and . . . help responsible homeowners stay in their homes.”

“The road to recovery will not be straight,” Obama warned. “There may be some slippage along the way. . . . There will be hazards and reverses. But I have every confidence that if we are willing to continue doing the critical work that must be done . . . then we will leave this struggling economy behind us and come out on the other side more prosperous as a people.”

After concluding his remarks, Obama sat down at a wooden desk that had been brought to the speaker’s platform and signed the bill using 10 pens as Vice President Biden watched. “There you go,” Obama said, after signing the bill.

The administration describes the stimulus plan as the first part of a three-pronged administration effort to attack the nation’s deepening economic problems. Administration officials last week announced the outlines of a plan to repair the teetering financial system. On Wednesday, Obama plans to use a visit to Arizona to announce details of an initiative to stem a rising tide of foreclosures.

Despite the president’s promise to work for bipartisan support for the stimulus plan, the debate over it magnified the ideological and partisan divides in Washington, with many Republicans criticizing it as a spending bill that would not do much to right the economy.

The plan also has been criticized by some economists who say it is not big enough or sufficiently focused to jolt the nation out of its economic tailspin. Some analysts doubt Obama’s assertion that the measure would save or create 3 million to 4 million jobs.

In remarks to reporters Tuesday aboard Air Force One, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said the Obama administration has not ruled out the possibility of a second stimulus sometime in the future, although he said no plans for such a package are in the works.

Reacting to the signing, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, Michael Steele, said in a statement that “Americans looking for jobs and struggling to pay bills will be disappointed by the spending package” enacted Tuesday.

“The transparency and bipartisanship that President Obama promised the American people was sacrificed to pass a pork-laden bill without any public review or meaningful Republican support,” he charged. He said the package “will fall short of creating the promised new jobs, but will guarantee a larger debt burden on our children and grandchildren.”

Steele said Republicans are united in opposition to the Democratic stimulus plan, which he said “focuses on putting Americans on the public dole, while the Republican plan focuses on putting America back to work.”

Branigin reported from Washington.