WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — President Barack Obama on Tuesday scoffed at inside-the-beltway pundits who have predicted he will not be able to get his agenda through Congress.

Asked at a morning press conference whether he had the political “juice” to get immigration reform, gun control and a budget deal, Obama said appearances were deceiving.

“As Mark Twain said, rumors of my demise may be a little exaggerated at this point,” Obama said.

“I am actually confident that there are a range of things that we are going to be able to get done,” Obama said.

He predicted that the Senate and the House will pass bipartisan immigration reform.

This was Obama’s second press conference since he was sworn in for his second term in January. It comes on the 100th day of his second term.

Talk that Obama’s agenda would languish in Congress escalated after the Senate blocked a centerpiece of the Democrat-led gun-control effort — a plan to expand background checks.

Afterwards, Obama called the vote “a shameful day for Washington.”

The president was also unable to persuade Republicans to lift across-the-board budget cuts known as sequestration.

Obama said he would continue to talk to members of Congress about ending sequestration.

“I will continue to talk with them about are there ways for us to fix this,” Obama said.

Obama suggested he had little choice but to accept legislation late last week that effectively exempted air-traffic controllers from sequestration. Furloughs of the controllers had caused delays and angered U.S. fliers.

Democrats had backed off their position that they would only accept a broader measure lifting sequestration to deal with air traffic controllers.

“The alternative, to impose a bunch of delays on passengers now...also does not fix the problem,” Obama said.

“The only way we are going to lift it is to do a bigger deal that meets the test of lowering our deficit and growing our economy,” Obama said. This will require compromise from Republicans and Democrats, he added.

Obama said he disagreed with Sen. Max Baucus, the outgoing Democrat from Montana and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, that implementation of his health-care initiative, commonly known as Obamacare, would be a train wreck.

The president said “a huge chunk” of the reform has been implemented. The remaining challenge is to set up system so that everyone buy health insurance in 2014 with federal subsidies if they can’t afford it on their own.

“That is still a big complicated piece of business,” Obama said, made harder by Republicans in Congress who want to block implementation and other stalling tactics from Republican governors and state legislators.

During the wide-ranging press conference, Obama also said the White House would leave “no stone unturned” in its review of the government’s interactions with Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev prior to the bombing of the Boston Marathon.

He again said that the search for conclusive proof that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons would take time, but said the U.S. was not a bystander in the conflict.