While leaving it up to Congress to be “responsible” and to “make the hard choices now to rein in our deficits,” the president called for new spending

While leaving it up to Congress to be “responsible” and to “make the hard choices now to rein in our deficits,” the president called for new spending on roads, bridges, high-speed rail, the Internet, and education.

That left his conservative critics almost marveling at a president who sees the state of the country in starkly different terms than do grass-roots conservatives.