WASHINGTON — Under heavy pressure to get Americans back to work, President Barack Obama on Monday suggested using a suddenly available pot of money left over from the government’s bank bailout to help create more jobs.
Obama, who will address the subject in a speech today, has been struggling to trim the nation’s painfully high unemployment rate, now at 10 percent, just below a quarter-century high.
He said there may be “selective approaches” for tapping into the money that was meant to prop up seriously ailing financial institutions. The administration and its allies on Capitol Hill would have to get around a provision of the 2008 bailout legislation that requires money that is paid back by banks or left over to be used exclusively for reducing the federal deficit.
With a tough election year coming up, Obama and congressional Democrats want badly to do something about jobs. Turning a highly unpopular financial rescue program, known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), into a potentially popular one with new jobs attached has strong political appeal.
The administration now estimates that the TARP will cost about $200 billion less than the $341 billion the White House estimated in August.
The lower estimate reflects faster repayments by big banks and less spending on some of the rescue programs as the financial sector recovered from its freefall more quickly than anticipated.
