Obama economic plan aims for 2.5 million new jobs by 2011
Reporting from Washington — President-elect Barack Obama signaled this morning that he would push for a bigger economic stimulus package than he previously discussed, pledging to create 2.5 million jobs in the effort to combat what he called a "crisis of historic proportions."
Obama said he would offer a two-year stimulus proposal instead of the expected one-year one, calling it "a plan big enough to meet the challenges we face."
"These aren't just steps to pull ourselves out of this immediate crisis," Obama said in his weekly radio address. "These are the long-term investments in our economic future that have been ignored for far too long."
The president-elect said he had already directed his economic team to come up with a recovery plan that should result in 2.5 million more jobs by January 2011. The president-elect had not mentioned that number before.
"We have now lost 1.2 million jobs this year," Obama said. "And if we don't act swiftly and boldly, most experts now believe that we could lose millions of jobs next year."
The plan would include jobs rebuilding roads and bridges, improving schools and building alternative-energy technologies. Details are to be worked out in the weeks to come.
As he crafts the proposal, Obama is also putting together an economic team he plans to introduce within the next few days.
Although the lineup has not been officially confirmed, the Tribune Washington bureau has reported that Timothy F. Geithner, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, is the likely candidate to serve as Treasury secretary and that New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson is shaping up as the new secretary of Commerce.
Parsons is a writer in our Washington bureau.
cparsons@tribune.com
