Mensaje del Presidente Obama al Congreso de los Estados Unidos

• Autor: Mirador Internacional

President Obama told Congress, "Now is the time to act boldly."

WASHINGTON — President 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 even as he warned that government bailouts have not come to an end.

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In his first address to a joint session of Congress, Mr. Obama mixed an acknowledgment of the depth of the economic problems with a Reaganesque exhortation to American resilience. He offered an expansive agenda followed by a pledge to begin paring an ever-climbing 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,” Mr. Obama said. “We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before.”

After eight years under President George W. Bush, Americans tuned in on Tuesday night to a scene that put the new Democratic cast front and center. Mr. Obama was preceded into the House chamber by his cabinet, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, whom he kissed as he made his way to the speaker’s dais. Even several Republicans leaned in close to Mr. Obama as he walked down the aisle.

He set up his push for a wide-ranging overhaul of domestic policy by lamenting what he said were decades of unwillingness on the part of society and government to make tough decisions or put long-term gain ahead of short-term benefit. In the process, he took a thinly veiled swipe at his predecessor for his tax cuts and philosophy of deregulation.

“That day of reckoning has arrived,” Mr. Obama said, “and the time to take charge of our future is here.”

As he spoke for nearly an hour in a prime-time address, Mr. Obama compared the moment facing America to challenges the country has weathered before. He reminded Americans that Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt and other presidents had found “promise amid peril,” which he said should serve as a guide for today.

His words were often stern, but laced with optimism and humor as he said neither political party was free of blame for the nation’s condition. He urged Americans to believe in his ability to steer the country through its fiscal emergency, even as he presented an agenda that would be considered ambitious in more prosperous times.

While he did not break new ground on the policies he...