WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama is crafting a financial stimulus plan far more ambitious than a quick cash infusion, viewing it as a way to create jobs in a struggling economy and push the nation toward improved healthcare and roads and clean energy.
In hopes of attracting a share of the billions of dollars in stimulus money, special interests and industry representatives have been meeting with the Obama team and recasting their proposals for federal funding as engines of economic recovery.
In private discussions with Obama's transition aides, interest groups are hearing that the president-elect wants proposals that could employ people right away.
Congressional leaders say a stimulus plan could cost $400 billion to $700 billion -- figures the Obama team does not dispute. Those numbers dwarf anything the House had been considering before Obama's victory. In recent years, federal stimulus packages sometimes amounted to giving Americans checks, with a goal of stoking consumer spending.
But Obama hopes to launch a stimulus program that helps drive the agenda of his presidency: improving the nation's power grid in ways that reduce carbon emissions and cut energy costs, shoring up roads, bridges and tunnels, and computerizing medical records so that doctors have up-to-date information on patients.
Such health information-technology initiatives enjoy bipartisan support in Congress, though disagreement over guaranteeing the privacy of patient records has proved to be an obstacle in the past.
The recession has propelled a stimulus package to the top of Obama's agenda. The government reported Friday that the U.S. economy lost 533,000 jobs in November and the unemployment rate climbed to 6.7%, its highest level in 15 years.
Obama has said he wants a stimulus bill passed as soon as possible. But an aide said Friday that, because of the broad scope of the president-elect's plans, waiting until the new Congress convenes next month might be more realistic.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) has said she hopes to land a bill on Obama's desk soon after his Jan. 20 inauguration.
But the Obama team is not expecting to reverse the nation's job losses during his first year in office. The recession is so severe that the economy probably will shed jobs in 2009 even with a stimulus in place, his aide said. Any turnaround might not come until 2010.
