On his thirty-second day in office, President Obama told a group of mayors that the economic stimulus money must be spent with "unprecedented responsibility and accountability" to avoid "waste, inefficiency, or fraud."
"We will use the new tools that the Recovery Act gives us to watch the taxpayers’ money with more rigor and transparency than ever,” he said. “If a federal agency proposes a project that will waste that money, I will not hesitate to call them out on it, and put a stop to it."
The president also said that Washington has not done enough to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
"The residents of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast who are helping rebuild are heroes who believe in their communities and they are succeeding despite the fact that they have not always received the support they deserve from the federal government," he said in a statement. "We must ensure that the failures of the past are never repeated."
And the White House continued to face criticism of the administration’s mortgage bailout plan, with Press Secretary Robert Gibbs lashing out at a CNBC host who ranted against the plan.
Watch Chip Reid’s CBS Evening News report about the president’s day below. More...
The important matters of state can wait: During a question and answer session in South Korea today, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was asked about the nature of love.
“I feel like more of an advice columnist than a Secretary of State today,” Clinton joked at the start of her response.
“I am very lucky because my husband is my best friend and he and I have been together for a very long time,” she continued. “Longer than most of you have been alive. And we have an an endless conversation. We never get bored. We get deeply involved in all of the work that we do and talk about it constantly and I just feel very fortunate that I have a relationship that has been so meaningful to me over my adult life.”
Clinton said there really is no description for love.
“How does anybody describe love?” she asked. “I mean, poets have spent millenia writing about love. Psychologists and authors of all sorts write about it. I think if you can describe it you may not fully be experiencing it because it is such a personal relationship.”
The secretary’s comments come a week after Valentine’s Day. Oddly enough, last Valentine’s Day this reporter had a personal interaction with Clinton: She called with well wishes because my significant other was stuck on the campaign trail following the then-presidential candidate.
As we close out the week, we once again bring you a these editorial cartoons from Tony Auth and Tom Toles poking some fun at the stories we have covered in the last few days.
In the last few months, Americans’ concerns about economic conditions have turned personal; it’s not just broad “economic conditions” that Americans are concerned about -- their worries have extended to their own lives as well.
An early February CBS News poll found a record number of Americans concerned about job loss in their household in the next year -- not surprising, given the loss of nearly 600,000 U.S. jobs in January 2009, as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Forty-four percent of Americans said they were very concerned that they or someone in their household would be out of work and looking for a job sometime in the next twelve months -- the highest number since CBS News began asking the question thirteen years ago.
An additional 28 percent were somewhat concerned; just one in four were not worried about household unemployment.
The only other time when concern about job loss approached current levels was in March 1996, when 37 percent reported they were very concerned.
Percentage Of Americans “Very Concerned” About Household Unemployment Over The Next Year:
On CBSNews.com’s Web-only show Washington Unplugged today, moderator Bob Schieffer pointed out that even though some Republicans opposed the economic stimulus package, they aren’t exactly turning down the funds it means for their state or district.
"Barack Obama gets a grand total of three Republican votes for the stimulus package, all three of them from the Senate, and yet you have Republican governors coming to town that are saying, ‘well, you know we are sort of philosophically opposed to this but there is going to be some money out there on the table and I guess we better take it,’" he said.
The comment prompted laughs from roundtable guests Nancy Cordes, the CBS News Capitol Hill correspondent, and Washington Post National Political Reporter Perry Bacon Jr.
"It is sort of the opposite of not in my back yard, right? It's only okay if it's in my back yard," Cordes said. She then asked what type of reaction constituents would have if their governors passed on the stimulus money.
"It's gonna take a tough guy to say, 'Hey folks there is a bunch of money out there that we can use to keep from firing policemen and firemen and cutting down school construction, but philosophically I am going to be against taking that,’" Schieffer responded.
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs held little back when responding to a question by CBS News’ Chip Reid about CNBC reporter Rick Santelli’s rant about the housing bill from the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade Thursday.
“I also think that it’s tremendously important that for people who rant on cable television – to be responsible and understand what it is they’re talking about. I feel assured that Mr. Santelli doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Gibbs said during the daily White House briefing for reporters, CBS News’ Mark Knoller reports.
The White House press secretary did not stop there. Knoller reports that Gibbs went on to criticize the objectivity of cable news reporting.
“If I hadn’t worked on the campaign but simply watced the cable news scorekeeping of the campaign – we lost virtually every day of the race....” he said. More...
John Warner is about to add another title to a list that already includes U.S. Senator, Secretary of the Navy, and Elizabeth Taylor's ex-husband.
After he gets back from a trip across the pond, the former senator from Virginia will be John Warner, Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. Warner is scheduled to be knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in a ceremony at Buckingham Palace, the Washington Post reports.
Warner is one of a handful of foreigners to receive this honor. Others include Rudy Giuliani, Steven Spielberg, and Bono. Alas, his status has its drawbacks: As an American, the 82-year old Warner cannot be called "sir."
"I am particularly pleased that we honor him as he steps down from Senate service," said British Ambassador Sir Nigel Sheinwald in a statement announcing Warner's knighthood. "On behalf of the British Government, I pay tribute to his extraordinary commitment to American national security, to the NATO alliance and the special relationship between our two countries." More...
On CBSNews.com’s Web-only show “Washington Unplugged” today, Pentagon Spokesperson Bryan Whitman told host Bob Schieffer that part of the reason the situation in Afghanistan deteriorated is because the U.S. “under-resourced the effort.”
He said the additional 17,000 American troops that President Obama plans to send to the country will help create a “sustained, persistent presence” that will keep any gains made by U.S. forces from disappearing.
“Afghanistan is a vastly huge country with very rugged terrain, a very long border,” he said. “It’s one thing to be able to go out and conduct an operation somewhere, but if you don’t have sufficient forces to stay there – to sustain the successes that you achieve – it’s easy for those successes to be lost in the long run.”
Asked about the troop increase, Whitman said “it was determined that we should start applying some additional military capability there, even while the new administration is conducting an extensive review of our Afghanistan strategy.”
“We have known for some time that the conditions in Afghanistan were not trending in the right direction,” he told Schieffer.
Books of poetry rarely fly off shelves. Then again, not many poets get to debut a piece in front of millions of people.
Unfortunately, Elizabeth Alexander, President Obama’s choice for inaugural poet, has not been able to translate her widely televised reading into a trip to the best seller list.
Alexander, a professor of African-American studies and English at Yale University, is a prominent writer and poet hailed for her pared down style. At the ceremony, she read a poem entitled "Praise Song for the Day" that was both a hymn to the power of language and a reflection on the historical importance of Mr. Obama's election as the country's first African-American president.
Since that time, Alexander's work has struggled to find an audience in print, selling only 6,000 copies, according to the Associated Press. The poem's publisher, Graywolf Press, announced a first printing of 100,000 copies. More...
Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn is calling on Sen. Roland Burris to resign.
"Under the current circumstances, where our state needs a strong voice in Washington on so many different issues, I don’t think it’s in the public interest or the common good to have a U.S. senator who has to spend an undue amount of time going over and over matters on how he obtained the office," Quinn said at a news conference today.
Burris was appointed to the Senate by former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, the man whom Quinn replaced after Blagojevich was impeached and removed from office following corruption charges.
Blagojevich appointed Burris to the seat while still in office but after charges were filed against him. Democrats first vowed not to seat Burris, but they eventually relented amid assurances from Burris that he had not acted improperly.
(AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Burris has since acknowledged, however, that he had contact with multiple Blagojevich associates about his interest in the seat. He also said he tried to fundraise for the embattled then-governor while being considered.
The revelations prompted calls for a perjury investigation of Burris, since they apparently contradicted his testimony before the Blagojevich impeachment committee. They have also led to calls for his resignation from state legislators, two House Democrats, and Chicago pastors.
Burris insists that he has done nothing wrong. More...
Fallen Heroes (2:47) When confronted with a harrowing situation in Iraq, Lance Corporal Jordan Haerter and Corporal Jonathan Yale made the ultimate sacrifice for those around them. Mark Strassmann reports.
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