President Barack Obama will be taking his case for a multibillion-dollar economic stimulus package straight to the American public this week. On Monday night Obama will hold his first prime-time news conference. He will also participate in town hall-style meetings in cities suffering particularly hard times - Elkhart, Indiana, on Monday and Fort Myers, Florida, on Tuesday. The public appearances come as Obama plunges into a difficult test of his leadership, struggling to get a divided Congress to agree on his economic recovery package while pitching a new plan to ease loans to US consumers and businesses. The Senate's $827 billion stimulus legislation seems assured narrow passage by Tuesday. Harder work for Obama and the Democrats comes in the days ahead, when the House and Senate attempt to reconcile differences in their two versions. Obama and Democratic Party leaders had hoped to have a bill ready for the president's signature by Feb. 16 - a deadline that grows more challenging by the day. At the Treasury Department, Secretary Timothy Geithner delayed the unveiling of a new bailout framework for financial institutions from Monday to Tuesday to let the administration focus on the Senate legislation. Geithner is considering steps to broaden the use of a new lending facility at the Federal Reserve, provide government guarantees to help banks deal with their troubled assets, and continue direct infusion of capital into banks in exchange for securities and tougher accountability rules. Amid the urgency created by nearly 600,000 new unemployed workers last month and new bank failures; Obama's economic prescriptions are coming under critical scrutiny by both Congress and the American public. The House and Senate bills are about $7 billion apart in cost and overlap in numerous ways. But the Senate bill has a greater emphasis on tax cuts, while the House bill devotes more money to states, local governments and schools. Lawrence Summers, Obama's top economic adviser, signaled the struggle ahead as he made the rounds of Sunday morning talk shows. “There are crucial areas, support for higher education, that are things that are in the House bill that are very, very important to the president,” he said on ABC. Rep. Barney Frank, the Democratic chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, warned that reductions in state spending in the Senate bill would hurt local communities.
