WASHINGTON — Pressing his bid for a fresh burst of government spending, President-elect Barack Obama on Wednesday announced he was creating a position -- a "chief performance officer" -- to kill off dubious government programs and ensure that taxpayer money was not wasted.
Obama's selection of Nancy Killefer to head the office is part of his campaign to pass an economic stimulus package estimated to be as much as $775 billion.
By sending a message that he won't tolerate inefficiency, Obama wants to win over Republican members of Congress who have warned that the bill should not be larded with unnecessary projects.
"I intend to make sure we have unprecedented measures to ensure that taxpayers keep track of how this money is spent," Obama told reporters at a news conference.
The president-elect has devoted most of his first full week in Washington to a two-track effort to pass his massive stimulus plan.
Behind the scenes, he and his advisors have been speaking with members of Congress about the exact size of the package and where the money will go.
He also had been trying to build a groundswell of support for the first major legislative initiative of his presidency, launching a public relations push that moves today to George Mason University in suburban Virginia, where Obama will deliver a speech calling for passage of the package.
Obama contends that injecting hundreds of billions of dollars into the economy is necessary to reverse a recession punctuated by a contracting economy, falling housing prices and rising unemployment.
He has conceded that his program will inflate the federal budget deficit. But doing nothing, he said, risks "red ink as far as the eye can see."
Bolstering the argument that the economy is in a tailspin, the Congressional Budget Office released a report Wednesday showing that the combination of falling tax revenue and government bailouts has created a projected deficit of $1.2 trillion, more than twice last year's all-time record of $455 billion.
The budget office also said the economy's nosedive would last for months, with unemployment topping 9% early next year.
Housing prices will drop by another 14% nationwide, the office projected, and the tide of mortgage foreclosures will not abate until the financial markets stabilize.
Nigel Gault, chief U.S. economist at IHS Global Insight, an economic consulting firm in Lexington, Mass., noted that the $1.2-trillion projection is roughly 8% of the gross domestic product -- a magnitude that is "off the charts."
