国际英语新闻：Bernanke sees recovery strengthening, but challenges remain tough

The housing sector, which had triggered this round of financial crisis and recession, remains in tough situation.

"The overhang of vacant and foreclosed homes continues to weigh heavily on both home prices and residential construction," Bernanke said.

Besides, the country's is facing lingering fiscal problems.

"The long-term fiscal challenges confronting the nation are especially daunting because they are mostly the product of powerful underlying trends, not short-term or temporary factors," Bernanke said.

Bernanke said that the U.S. federal budget deficit has expanded to an average of more than 9 percent of gross domestic product ( GDP) over the past two years, up from an average of about 2 percent of GDP during the three years prior to the recession.

He noted that the extraordinarily wide deficit largely reflects the weakness of the economy along with the actions that the Administration and the Congress took to ease the recession and steady financial markets.

"However, even after economic and financial conditions have returned to normal, the federal budget will remain on an unsustainable path, with the budget gap becoming increasingly large over time," he said.

Bernanke said that there are the two major driving forces behind the soaring federal budget, including the aging of the U.S. population and rapidly rising health-care costs.

The Congress Budget Office projected that U.S. federal spending for health-care programs -- which includes Medicare, Medicaid, and subsidies to purchase health insurance through new insurance exchanges -- will roughly double as a percentage of GDP over the next 25 years.

The projected fiscal pressures associated with Social Security are also notable.

Bernanke warned that sustained high rates of government borrowing would both drain funds away from private investment and increase the country's debt to foreigners. Moreover, diminishing investor confidence that deficits will be brought under control would ultimately lead to sharply rising interest rates on government debt and, potentially, to broader financial turmoil.

In order to restore fiscal sustainability in the United States, he urged the Congress and the Administration to seek reforms to the government's tax policies and spending priorities that serve not only to reduce the deficit, but also to enhance the long-term growth potential of the economy.

"Our nation cannot reasonably expect to grow its way out of our fiscal imbalances, but a more productive economy will ease the tradeoffs that we face." Bernanke concluded.