"To ensure that a crisis of this magnitude never happens again, I ask Congress to move quickly on legislation that will finally reform our outdated regulatory system," he added.

Though deep partisan fault lines are quickly reemerging, Obama is receiving strong reviews for this first full month in office.

A new Washington Post-ABC News survey found 68 percent of the public approves of Obama's job performance, while a Gallup poll, also out on Tuesday, showed his approval rating falling to 59 percent.

Fiscal challenges 

As Obama pours money into the economy in hopes to turn it around, he is also faced with making tough decisions on stemming the tide of red ink without strangling a future recovery.

Obama told audience that he will cut the deficit, now standing at about 1.3 trillion dollars, in half by the end of his term in 2013.

"Yesterday, I held a fiscal summit where I pledged to cut the deficit in half by the end of my first term in office," said Obama, referring to a bipartisan summit on "fiscal responsibility" on Monday.

"My administration has also begun to go line by line through the federal budget in order to eliminate wasteful and ineffective programs," said Obama.

"As you can imagine, this is a process that will take some time. But we're starting with the biggest lines. We have already identified 2 trillion dollars in savings over the next decade," he said.

Obama, who took the oath of office on Jan. 20, is due to deliver the outline of his administration's first budget on Thursday for the 2010 fiscal year, which begins on Oct. 1, 2009.

The budget will reflect big increases in government spending on public works that were part of the 787 billion dollar economic stimulus plan that Obama signed into law earlier this month.

US federal budget deficit soared to 569 billion dollars in the first four months of the current fiscal year, the highest in record for this period, according to the Treasury Department.

The deficit for October 2008 through January 2009 was six times more than the red ink during the year-ago period and has already surpassed the imbalance for all of last year, which was 454.8 billion dollars, a full-year record.

The bipartisan Congressional Budget Office has projected that the budget deficit will hit an all-time high of 1.2 trillion dollars in the current fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30, 2009. The estimate doesn't include the cost of Obama's economic stimulus bill.

However, private economists expect the budget deficit for this current fiscal year to hit 1.6 trillion dollars.

During Tuesday's speech, Obama said he will cut the spending by ending US combat in Iraq and eliminating some of former President George W. Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy.

"We'll eliminate the no-bid contracts that have wasted billions in Iraq, and reform our defense budget so that we're not paying for Cold War-era weapons systems we don't use," said Obama.

"We are now carefully reviewing our policies in both wars, and I will soon announce a way forward in Iraq that leaves Iraq to its people and responsibly ends this war," he noted.

"Everyone in this chamber, Democrats and Republicans, will have to sacrifice some worthy priorities for which there are no dollars," said the president. "And that includes me."

(Xinhua News Agency February 25, 2009)