国际英语新闻：Obama: Rising investment best thing for stronger U.S. economy

"Today, more than 90 percent of homes in South Korea subscribe to high-speed broadband. Meanwhile, in America, the nation that created the Internet, only 65 percent of households can say the same," he said, calling high-speed wireless service the next train station for U.S. families and businesses.

Obama intended to make high-speed wireless services available to at least 98 percent of Americans.

Economists believed that the world's largest economy needed more government-backed infrastructure projects to bolster its nascent economic recovery and slackening job market in the short run, while the newly empowered Republicans was aimed at slashing billions of government spending for improving the nation's long- term fiscal sustainability. But his infrastructure plans needed to get funding support from the Congress.

Although the U.S. economy has struggled to recover from the recent recession, the nation still faces daunting economic and budgetary challenges, Douglas Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), said on Thursday.

Elmendorf pointed out that for the 2011 fiscal year, if current laws remain unchanged, the federal budget deficit will rise to an even alarming figure of nearly 1.5 trillion dollars, or 9.8 percent of the nation's gross domestic product (GDP).