President Barack Obama promised change. He vowed to scour the federal budget for wasteful and ineffective spending.

With a $900 billion stimulus bill expected to be the subject of compromise between the House and the Senate, Obama should press members of both parties to keep the bill focused on spending that is stimulative.

Americans might believe Obama's promise to bring change, but trusting members of Congress is a different matter, given its history of pork-barrel spending and slipping unrelated spending into bills considered to have "must pass" status. The giant economic stimulus package looks like the mother of all "must pass" bills, so taxpayers should be leery.

Already, a group of about 20 moderates from both parties is quietly working behind the scenes to eliminate some questionable spending from the bill. At the same time, high-profile party leaders from both parties are grandstanding and making speeches about the dire threat to the country if the bill is — or is not — passed in its current form.

Obama wants the bill to pass, but he also should make clear his support for those who want to remove inappropriate, nonstimulative spending.

There are efforts to remove about $100 billion from the $900 billion package, which has ballooned from $725 billion. Some early targets for elimination included about $40 billion for state education departments to help school districts. Also expected to be trimmed is $14 billion for special education programs and spending for the No Child Left Behind law.

These programs might well be worthy, but they are not stimulus spending and will do nothing to help the economy.

The earlier versions of the stimulus package also contained $6.5 billion for space exploration, science programs as well as federal money to be directed to local municipalities for crime-fighting efforts. Again, worthwhile projects, but not job creating.

Obama should continue to make the case for stimulus spending. But he also should admit that not all spending is stimulus spending.

Reportedly, about $800 million for fighting the flu was an early spending item removed from the giant stimulus bill.

It was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who famously inserted $200 million for family planning and contraception into the bill. That story generated headlines and was the first signal that Congress' stimulus bills were not all about creating jobs and helping the economy.

Even with the spending cuts reported in the media, are Americans expected to believe that this small number of nonstimulative projects are the only dollars in the $900 billion package not focused on job creation?

The need for stimulative spending is urgent, according to most economists. And the sooner the better. But while the time pressure to pass this giant spending bill might work for politicians eager to sneak in nonstimulative spending, the compressed time to produce the bill should make most Americans suspicious.

This stimulus bill has been thrown together quickly — under the same sort of time pressure as last year's much-criticized Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) aimed at bailing out the financial industry.

Asking Congress to hurriedly find ways to spend nearly $1 trillion, during such unprecedented times when there is broad support for increased government spending, is a recipe for disaster, or at least mischief.

Writing in the New York Times, columnist Maureen Dowd said, "Betrayed by their bankers and leaders, Americans were desperate to trust someone when they made Barack Obama president. His debut (featuring multiple cabinet nominees with tax problems) has left them skeptical about his willingness to smack down those who would flout his high standards or waste our money."

Dowd suggests, "Mr. Obama should have taken a red pencil to the $819 billion stimulus bill and slashed all the provisions that looked like caricatures of Democratic drunken-sailor spending."

He still can do that — or urge Democratic leaders in Congress to scrub the bill clean. If he fails, he risks losing some of the extraordinary goodwill that he carried into the White House less than a month ago.

And clean-up of the $900 billion spending bill would be good for Obama's presidency, and his promise for change. It also would be good for America, and a real sign of change.