WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama is developing a plan to create or preserve 2.5 million jobs over the next two years by spending billions of dollars to rebuild roads and bridges, modernize public schools, and construct wind farms and other alternative sources of energy.
The plan, which Obama announced Saturday during the weekly Democratic radio address, 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 demands 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, citing chaotic financial markets, rising jobless claims and the specter of a “deflationary spiral that could increase our massive debt even further.”
He provided few details and no price tag but said his economic team is working on “a plan big enough to meet the challenges we face that I intend to sign soon after taking office.”
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.
Obama said the plan would be “a down payment on the type of reform my administration will bring to Washington.”
Obama’s advisers are coordinating with Democrats in Congress to craft a proposal intended to spur economic activity. Congressional leaders have said they hope to pass it shortly after Congress convenes next year and have it on Obama’s desk soon after he takes office Jan. 20.
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.
“These aren’t just steps to pull ourselves out of this immediate crisis; these are long-term investments in our economic future that have been ignored for far too long,” he said.
The campaign did not release an estimate of the number of jobs that his latest proposal would create. Congressional aides who have been involved in developing stimulus proposals said that any plan to create 2.5 million jobs is likely to be well over $200 billion, or between 1 percent and 2 percent of the gross domestic product.
Some economists have compared Obama’s proposals to the spending spree President Franklin D. Roosevelt launched during his early months in office in 1933. Roosevelt offered jobs programs and cash for public-works projects, such as the Tennessee Valley Authority, in hopes of easing the pain of the Great Depression.
Without details, it is impossible to say whether Obama’s goal of creating 2.5 million jobs is realistic.
Communications officials named
WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama on Saturday named longtime spokesman Robert Gibbs as White House press secretary and reached outside his inner circle for his White House communications director.
The director of communications will be Ellen Moran, who is executive director of the Washington group Emily’s List. She will join a team of longtime close advisers who will work closely with Obama on a daily basis.
Her deputy in the White House will be Dan Pfeiffer, communications director for Obama’s transition team.
Gibbs went to work for Obama’s Senate campaign in 2004 and was communications director while Obama was in the Senate.
Moran will be in charge of getting Obama’s message out. Emily’s, a group that backs female candidates who support abortion rights, was an active supporter of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton during the presidential primary. Moran also has worked for the AFL-CIO and has helped plan inaugurals for President Bill Clinton.
The Associated Press
