US President Barack Obama called Monday for Congress to boost infrastructure spending to create more jobs amid an ongoing weak economic picture, DPA reported.
Speaking to a crowd of union members in Detroit to mark the US holiday of Labor Day, Obama said that his major economic speech to Congress later this week would focus on "a new way forward on jobs to revive the economy and put more Americans back to work right now."
Among the proposals will be additional spending on roads and other infrastructure projects, he said.
"There is work to be done. Labour's on board, business is on board. We just need to get Congress on board," he said. "Let's put America back to work."
US unemployment stood flat at 9.1 per cent in August, and Obama is coming under increasing pressure to revive the economy ahead of presidential elections next year. He is to address a joint session of both houses of Congress about job creation on Thursday evening.
"These are tough times for working Americans, they're even tougher for those who are looking for work," Obama told the crowd in Detroit, at times sounding like a campaign rally designed to fire up the Democratic Party's union base.
"We've got a lot more work to do to recover fully from this recession. I'm not satisfied to get back to where we were before the recession. We've got to restore the middle class in America," Obama said, while praising the unions for their part in the labour reforms of the last century.
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