WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama, in an op-ed piece, is urging Americans to have patience with the stimulus plan.

The op-ed appeared this morning on the Web site of the Washington Post. In it, Obama says the $787 billion program is designed to work over two years, and was never meant to return the economy to full health. He says the aim is to give a boost and stop the free fall. Obama says, "So far, it has done that."

Just as he said yesterday in his weekly radio and Internet address, Obama says in any recession "unemployment tends to recover more slowly than other measures of economic activity."

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