Obama says growth is a good start on road to recovery

The economy is making strides to ease out of the recession with steady but modest growth and a large increase over numbers from a year ago. 

President Barack Obama said Friday the 3.2 growth in gross domestic product in the first quarter shows that nation's economy is on the right track, a vast turnaround from a year ago when the economy shrank 6.4 percent. 

'We're heading in the right direction, we're moving forward," Obama said today in the Rose Garden. "Our economy is stronger. That economic heartbeat is growing stronger. But I measure progress by a different pulse, the progress the American people feel in their own lives, day in, day out." 

Numbers were bolstered by consumer spending that jumped to 3.6 percent in the first quarter, up from 1.6 percent in the last three months of 2009, according to the Commerce Department. 

While he called today's news an "important milestone on our road to recovery" his trip to this week to the Midwest showed the damaged incurred by the nation's most protracted recession. 

The good news "doesn't mean much to an American who has lost his or her job and can't find another," he said. 

Cutting taxes to small businesses, pushing for more lending and targeting investment in the economy on initiatives such as clean energy will help creates jobs, Obama said. 

"Government can't replace every job that has been lost. That's not government's role," he said. "It is America's business all across the country -- the private sector -- businesses that have always been and will always be the engines of our job creation."