Obama outlines aggressive economic recovery program
Two-year plan centers around spending and tax cuts
WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama signaled Sunday that he will move urgently and aggressively to rescue the plunging economy, demanding swift passage by Congress of a massive two-year spending and tax-cutting recovery program.
“We’re out with the dithering; we’re in with a bang,” said Obama economic adviser Austan D. Goolsbee.
Obama’s plans, outlined by his transition team on television talk shows, could put aside his campaign pledge to repeal a Bush tax cut for the wealthy. With the downturn in the economy, those tax cuts may remain in place until they are scheduled to die in 2011, said William M. Daley, an economic adviser. “That looks more likely than not,” he said.
Obama aides called on lawmakers to pass, by the Jan. 20 inauguration, legislation that meets Obama’s two-year goal of saving or creating 2.5 million jobs. Democratic congressional leaders said they would get to work when Congress convenes Jan. 6.
Though Obama aides declined to discuss a total cost, it probably would far exceed the $175 billion he proposed during the campaign. Some economists and lawmakers have argued for a two-year plan as large as $700 billion, equal to the Wall Street bailout that Congress approved last month.
“I don’t know what the exact number is, but it’s going to be a big number. It has to be,” Goolsbee said.
With the wounded economy worsening, the Obama team’s new assertiveness was a recognition that he needed to soothe financial markets with signs of leadership. It also foreshadowed a more hands-on role by Obama to influence congressional action during the final weeks of the transition.
“We don’t have time to waste here,” said Obama senior adviser David Axelrod. “We want to hit the ground running on Jan. 20.” The second-ranking House Democrat, Rep. Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, said, “We expect to have, during the first couple of weeks of January, a package for the president’s consideration when he takes office.”
Axelrod warned automakers, seeking tens of billions of dollars in government help to stave off collapse, to devise a plan to retool and restructure by next month. Otherwise, he said, “there is very little taxpayers can do to help them.”
The senior adviser couldn’t resist taking a jab at Detroit’s Big Three executives, who left empty-handed last week after flying into Washington in separate corporate jets and pleading with Congress for money. “I hope that they will come back to Washington in early December — on commercial flights — with a plan,” Axelrod said.
Obama’s emphasis on the economy began Saturday when he outlined the framework of a plan to save or create 2.5 million jobs by the end of 2010. The scope of the recovery plan is far more ambitious than what Obama outlined during his campaign.
“There won’t be any tax increases in the January package,” said one Obama aide.
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