Obama On Public's Anger At Wall Street
President Obama tells 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft New York's Wall Streeters need to get out of town to realize populist anger in his longest interview since assuming office. Sunday, March 22, 7 p.m. ET/PT.
Obama's great challenge: 'Political will'

by Mark Silva

"We got socked in the jaw here'' this week, NBC's David Gregory said today, pointing to the Congressional Budget Office's projection that the federal deficit over the coming decade will be far larger than President Barack Obama has predicted.

It will take a massive amount of political will to spend the sort of money the president is asking Congress to spend with his $3.55-trillion new budget for 2010, the Meet the Press host suggested today.

"The political will issue is the president's greatest single challenge,'' New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg told his NBC News host. "There is a crisis of confidence in this country.

"It's up to the president,'' Bloomberg said. "He's been in office two months, he campaigned on change, everybody wants him to succeed, and he's got to now explain exactly that to the publicwhy it is so important to make the investment, and to commit ourselves down the road, and our kids down the road, to pay back all of the money they are spending today...

"We're in a situation today where he cannot not spend... We've got to get people back confident that they are not going to lose their jobs, that they're not going to lose their houses,'' the billionaire mayor, a political independent, said today.

Can the nation afford to make such investments, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell was asked on the show. The Democratic chairman of the National Governors Association said: "I don't think we can afford not to do it.... The American people aren't against spending. They're against spending they can't see.... They're against bailouts.... The American people want to be able to see it. They want to be able to touch it.''

They are both echoing what Obama himself said in his weekly address this weekend -- that the challenges of the economy are too great to ignore.

Treasury's Toxic Asset Plan Could Cost $1 Trillion

The Obama administration's latest attempt to tackle the banking crisis and get loans flowing to families and businesses rely on a new government entity, the Public Investment Corp., to help purchase as much as $1 trillion in toxic assets on banks' books.