US President Barack Obama will call on Americans to "pull together" and "take responsibility for our future" in his first speech to a joint session of Congress, according to excerpts of his address released by the White House.

"We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before," he is expected to say.

In the excerpts, Obama urges Americans to "confront boldly the challenges we face," saying that the answers to the country's problems "don't lie beyond our reach."

"They exist in our laboratories and universities; in our fields and our factories; in the imaginations of our entrepreneurs and the pride of the hardest-working people on Earth," he says.

Obama is planning to strike a more optimistic tone than he has in recent days by laying out a "game plan" to beat the financial crisis, a senior White House official was quoted by CNN as saying.

The senior official said there will only be a brief discussion of foreign policy, with mentions of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as other threats around the world.

Instead, the speech will be dominated by four issues that all relate to the president's broader economic message: financial stability and responsibility, education, energy independence and overhaul of health care.

Obama is scheduled to speak before lawmakers at 9 p.m. EST (0200 GMT Wednesday) and the speech is expected to run between 50 and 60 minutes.

(Xinhua News Agency February 25, 2009)