President-elect Barack Obama tells “60 Minutes” that one of his top priorities will be a program to help homeowners renegotiate mortgages to avoid default.
Obama made the remarks in his first post-election interview, a sit-down with Steve Kroft of CBS News that will take up the full hour on Sunday.
“We have no focused on foreclosures and what’s happening to homeowners as much as I would like,” Obama said. “We’ve got to set up a negotiation between banks and borrowers so that people can stay in their homes. That is going to have an impact on the economy as a whole. And, you know, one thing I’m determined is that if we don’t have a clear, focused program for homeowners by the time I take office, we will after I take office.” He also said he would make Cabinet appointments soon and would name a Republican, according to CBS.
Following are excerpts from the interview:
Q: Are you in sync with (Treasury) Secretary Paulson in terms of how the $700 billion is being used?
A: Well, look, Hank Paulson has worked tirelessly under some very difficult circumstances. I think Hank would be the first one to acknowledge that probably not everything that’s been done has worked the way he had hoped it would work. You know, what we’ve done is we’ve assigned somebody on my transition team who interacts with him on a daily basis. And, you know, we are getting the information that’s required and we’re making suggestions in some circumstances about how we think they might approach some of these problems.
Q: Are they listening?
A: We’ll find out.
Q: The Congress has said there are not the votes in Congress to pass any kind of a relief package for General Motors.
A: For the auto industry to completely collapse would be a disaster in this kind of environment. So it’s my belief that we need to provide assistance to the auto industry. But I think that it can’t be a blank check. So my hope is that over the course of the next week, between the White House and Congress, the discussions are shaped around providing assistance but making sure that that assistance is conditioned on labor, management, suppliers, lenders, all of the stakeholders coming together with a plan — what does a sustainable U.S. auto industry look like? So that we are creating a bridge loan to somewhere as opposed to a bridge loan to nowhere. And that’s I think what you haven’t yet seen.
I’ve been spending a lot of time reading (Abraham) Lincoln. There is a wisdom there and a humility about his approach to government, even before he was president, that I just find very helpful.
Q: Put a lot of his political enemies in his Cabinet.
A: He did.
Q: Is that something you’re considering?
A: Well, I tell you what. I find him a very wise man.
Q: Have there been moments when you’ve said, “What did I get myself into?”
A: I will say that the challenges that we’re confronting are enormous. And they’re multiple. And so there are times during the course of a given a day where you think, “Where do I start in terms of moving things forward?” And I think that part of this next two months is to really get a clear set of priorities, understanding we’re not going be able to do everything at once, making sure the team is in place, and moving forward in a very deliberate way and sending a clear signal to the American people that we’re going to be thinking about them and what they’re going through.