US president-elect Barack Obama’s economic stimulus plan may cost between US$675 billion and US$775 billion and will favor long-term infrastructure and job creation projects, top Obama aides said.
With the US facing gloomy forecasts of up to 10 percent unemployment and a deepening recession next year — likely “the bleakest economic outlook since World War II” — Lawrence Summers said creating three million new jobs was a “key pillar” of Obama’s plan.
Obama senior adviser David Axelrod told CBS television on Sunday that US$675 billion and US$775 billion were “not fixed” numbers.
“In this crisis, doing too little poses a greater threat than doing too much,” Summers, tapped to head the White House National Economic Council, wrote in an editorial in the Washington Post. “Any sound economic strategy in the current context must be directed at both creating the jobs that Americans need and doing the work that our economy requires.”
Summers, who served as Treasury secretary under former president Bill Clinton, signaled that Obama would adopt a different approach than US President George W. Bush.
“Some argue that instead of attempting to both create jobs and invest in our long-run growth, we should focus exclusively on short-term policies that generate consumer spending,” he said.
“But that approach led to some of the challenges we face today — and it is that approach that we must reject if we are going to strengthen our middle class and our economy over the long run.”
Obama’s incoming administration and congressional leaders are “getting awful close” to a general agreement on the huge economic stimulus package the Obama team hopes to implement soon after the Jan. 20 inauguration, vice president-elect Joseph Biden said last week.
“I don’t think Americans can wait,” Axelrod said. “People are suffering, our economy is sliding and we need to act. So our message to Congress is to work on it with all deliberate speed.”
Axelrod said the economic downturn adds urgency to repealing Bush’s tax cuts for wealthier Americans and will not prevent the future Obama administration from enacting its planned middle-class tax cuts.
Bush’s tax cuts are “something that we plainly can’t afford moving forward. And whether it expires or whether we repeal it a little bit early we’ll determine later, but it’s going to go. It has to go.” he told NBC.
He argued that eliminating the Bush tax cuts did not mean Obama would raise taxes.
Obama’s economic stimulus plan “will amount to a net tax cut for the American people,” he said. “We feel it’s important that middle-class people get some relief now.”
In terms of job creation, “we’re talking about investing in alternative energy projects that will help us achieve energy independence. We’re talking about rebuilding the nation’s classrooms to bring them into the 21st century, and labs and libraries so our kids can compete,” Axelrod added.
Around 80 percent of the 3 million new jobs Obama aims to create will be “in the private sector, including emerging sectors such as environmental technology,” Summers said, calling it a “bold goal.”
“Failure to create enough jobs in the short term would put the prospect of recovery at risk,” Summers said. “Failure to start undertaking necessary long-term investments would endanger the foundation of our recovery and, ultimately, our children’s prosperity.”
The Obama stimulus plan was originally intended to safeguard 2.5 million jobs in the next couple of years. But its scope was expanded to three million jobs earlier this month as the US economy sank deeper into recession.
Biden reaffirmed that Obama wants the new Democratic-led Congress to make the economic package its top priority when it convenes early next month, calling it “the most urgent order of business for the new administration.”
Also See: No time to waste for Obama
A string of rape and assault allegations against the son of Norway’s future queen have plunged the royal family into its “biggest scandal” ever, wrapping up an annus horribilis for the monarchy. The legal troubles surrounding Marius Borg Hoiby, the 27-year-old son born of a relationship before Norwegian Crown Princess Mette-Marit’s marriage to Norwegian Crown Prince Haakon, have dominated the Scandinavian country’s headlines since August. The tall strapping blond with a “bad boy” look — often photographed in tuxedos, slicked back hair, earrings and tattoos — was arrested in Oslo on Aug. 4 suspected of assaulting his girlfriend the previous night. A photograph
‘GOOD POLITICS’: He is a ‘pragmatic radical’ and has moderated his rhetoric since the height of his radicalism in 2014, a lecturer in contemporary Islam said Abu Mohammed al-Jolani is the leader of the Islamist alliance that spearheaded an offensive that rebels say brought down Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and ended five decades of Baath Party rule in Syria. Al-Jolani heads Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is rooted in Syria’s branch of al-Qaeda. He is a former extremist who adopted a more moderate posture in order to achieve his goals. Yesterday, as the rebels entered Damascus, he ordered all military forces in the capital not to approach public institutions. Last week, he said the objective of his offensive, which saw city after city fall from government control, was to
IVY LEAGUE GRADUATE: Suspect Luigi Nicholas Mangione, whose grandfather was a self-made real-estate developer and philanthropist, had a life of privilege The man charged with murder in the killing of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare made it clear he was not going to make things easy on authorities, shouting unintelligibly and writhing in the grip of sheriff’s deputies as he was led into court and then objecting to being brought to New York to face trial. The displays of resistance on Tuesday were not expected to significantly delay legal proceedings for Luigi Nicholas Mangione, who was charged in last week’s Manhattan killing of Brian Thompson, the leader of the US’ largest medical insurance company. Little new information has come out about motivation,
‘MONSTROUS CRIME’: The killings were overseen by a powerful gang leader who was convinced his son’s illness was caused by voodoo practitioners, a civil organization said Nearly 200 people in Haiti were killed in brutal weekend violence reportedly orchestrated against voodoo practitioners, with the government on Monday condemning a massacre of “unbearable cruelty.” The killings in the capital, Port-au-Prince, were overseen by a powerful gang leader convinced that his son’s illness was caused by followers of the religion, the civil organization the Committee for Peace and Development (CPD) said. It was the latest act of extreme violence by powerful gangs that control most of the capital in the impoverished Caribbean country mired for decades in political instability, natural disasters and other woes. “He decided to cruelly punish all
RSS