Obama plans economic stimulus plan to save 2.5 million jobs
Posted on Sat, Nov. 22, 2008
kansascity.com
CHICAGO | President-elect Barack Obama said Saturday that he had started work on a sustained, two-year economic stimulus plan designed to create or save 2.5 million jobs.
The plan, which envisions those new jobs by January 2011, is “big enough to meet the challenges we face.”
The plan, which Obama announced in the weekly Democratic radio address, would funnel money toward public works programs to repair the country’s failing infrastructure, modernize schools and develop alternative energy sources and more efficient cars.
“These aren’t just steps to pull ourselves out of this immediate crisis. These are the long-term investments in our economic future that have been ignored for far too long.”
This plan, which Obama directed his economic team to help devise, is broader than the pledges he offered while campaigning. He said the deepening financial outlook demanded more robust action.
Indeed, the plan is more expansive — and undoubtedly more expensive — than anything proposed so far to revive the nation’s deteriorating economy.
Obama said the darkening economic outlook demanded that Washington act “swiftly and boldly” to diminish the risk that the nation “could lose millions of jobs next year.”
“The news this week has only reinforced the fact that we are facing an economic crisis of historic proportions,” Obama said. “We now risk falling into a deflationary spiral that could increase our massive debt even further.”
The goal is to get the plan quickly through Congress — which would require help from both parties — after his Jan. 20 inauguration.
“I’ll be welcome to ideas and suggestions from both sides of the aisle, but what is not negotiable is the need for immediate action.”
The announcement came after a tumultuous week. The stock market fell last week to lows not seen in a decade before swelling Friday with news that Timothy Geithner, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, would be nominated as Treasury secretary.
On Monday, Obama is to introduce his economic team, which also will include Jacob J. Lew, a budget director under President Bill Clinton, who would serve as National Economic Council director, and Peter R. Orszag, the head of the Congressional Budget Office, who would be the next White House budget director.
Transition officials said economist Lawrence Summers, who was a senior economic adviser to Obama in the campaign, might also have a senior White House role, but that remained unclear Saturday. Summers served as secretary of the Treasury in the last 18 months of the Clinton administration and was a contender for the same job in the Obama administration.
In recent newspaper columns, Summers has advocated for a forceful government stimulus plan and has argued that the recent $700 billion bailout package means the federal government should be doing more, not less, in areas such as health care, energy, education and tax relief. Obama appeared to echo those thoughts in his radio address.
While cast as a response to a rapidly worsening crisis — the plan could enable Obama to shift massive sums to domestic priorities that Democrats say have long been neglected, such as health care and education.
It also could provide seed money to reshape major U.S. industries, hastening the production of wind and solar energy and fuel-efficient cars, for example. Obama said the plan would be “a down payment on the type of reform my administration will bring to Washington.”
Obama’s address echoed many of the ideas Democrats on Capitol Hill have been advocating for nearly a year.
Obama said his plan would launch “a two-year nationwide effort to jump-start job creation in America and lay the foundation for a strong and growing economy. We’ll put people back to work rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges, modernizing schools that are failing our children, and building wind farms and solar panels,” as well as producing fuel-efficient cars.
Greg Wetstone, the director of government and public affairs for the American Wind Energy Association, applauded Obama’s plans to expand alternative energy resources and called it a “concept very much branded in reality.”
“With the policies he has outlined for renewable energy, President-elect Obama is removing the single largest impediment to renewable energy development in this country, which has been the absence of a long-term federal commitment to deploy these technologies.”
A spokesman for the trucking industry’s main trade group said Saturday that the group, the American Trucking Associations, supports investments in infrastructure as a method of reducing the nation’s overall carbon emissions and cutting delays and congestion.
“But nothing is going to help the trucking industry except for an increase in trade and repairs to the economy,” said Clayton Boyce, vice president of public affairs for the ATA.
Obama pointed to the past as a reason for optimism, striking the soaring tones he became known for on the campaign trail. He said Americans in this country’s darkest hours have risen above their divisions to solve their problems, as a hope for the future.
“We have acted boldly, bravely and, above all, together,” Obama said. “That is the chance our new beginning now offers us, and that is the challenge we must rise to in the days to come. It is time to act. As the next president of the United States, I will.”
The Obama plan
•Create or preserve 2.5 million jobs over the next two years.
•Repair the country’s roads, bridges and schools.
•Invest in alternative energy sources.
•Have a package of legislation ready for his signature soon after inauguration.
The Obama team
Obama is to announce Monday an economic team that includes:
•Timothy Geithner, Treasury secretary. Currently president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
•Jacob J. Lew, National Economic Council director. Formerly a budget director under Bill Clinton.
•Peter R. Orszag, White House budget director. Currently head of the Congressional Budget Office.
•Bill Richardson, commerce secretary. Currently governor of New Mexico.
Jeff Zeleny and Jackie Calmes of The New York Times, Lori Montgomery of The Washington Post and Will Lester of The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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