Obama vows to press ahead on big challenges

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Tuesday that he would not be dissuaded from taking on new economic challenges after his healthcare reform victory, despite the prospect for continued Republican opposition.

"I will continually reach out to Republicans. I will continue to incorporate their ideas, even when they don't vote for the ideas that I've presented," he said in an interview with NBC's "Today" show.

"But what I'm not going to be dissuaded from is us going ahead and taking on these big challenges that are critical in terms of America's long-term economic health."

The president said specifically that it was important for Congress to move ahead with legislation on energy and immigration policy as well as financial regulatory reform.

"On each of these issues, I'm going to actively seek Republican support. But there are going to be areas where we disagree and I will continue to maintain a tone where if they've got good ideas I'm going to take them," Obama said.

"But if we disagree, then we'll fight it out on the floor of the Senate and the House."

Democrats succeeded in getting Obama's healthcare reform plan through Congress without a single vote from Republicans, who said the reforms were too costly and called for too much federal government involvement in the private sector.

"The Republican Party made a calculated decision, a political decision that they would not support whatever we did," Obama said. "Any objective observer looking at this bill would say that this is a middle-of-the-road, centrist approach," he said.

(Reporting by David Morgan)