CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
Nov. 24, 2008 – 12:23 p.m.
Obama Announces New Economic Team
Saying “we don’t have a minute to waste,” President-Elect Barack Obama today named New York Federal Reserve chief Timothy F. Geithner as Treasury Secretary and onetime Treasury Secretary Lawrence E. Summers as Director of his National Economic Council to lead his economic team.
Obama said his appointees “will hit the ground running” to tackle the nation’s current financial crisis.
He also tapped University of California economics professor Cristina D. Romer to chair the Council of Economic Advisers; Melody C. Barnes, a former aide to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy as director of the Domestic Policy Council; and, Heather A. Higginbottom, who was his campaign policy director, as deputy director of the Domestic Policy Council.
As was true of his aides yesterday, Obama said he would propose a big stimulus package but would not discuss numbers.
Yesterday, members of his transition team and top Democratic lawmakers on Capitol Hill said they were thinking big when it came to the size of an economic stimulus package, but were vague on just how much it would cost.
The closest anyone from Obama’s transition team came to giving an answer was Austan Goolsbee, a University of Chicago economist, who has been advising the president-elect.
Goolsbee gave a starting point on CBS’ “Face the Nation:” “It has to be big. In the campaign, he (Obama) was looking at stimulus that was in the $175 billion range, and the economy has gotten substantially worse since then.”
Host Bob Schieffer then turned the question on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi , asking whether her thinking might be a package in the $300 billion ballpark.
“It could be,” was her careful answer. “It could be. If it also contained a tax cut. Some are saying that several hundred billion dollars would have to be some investments into the future, but creating jobs immediately, and a tax cut.”
Over at ABC’s “This Week,” George Stephanopoulous tried out a $500 billion to $700 billion figure on Obama senior adviser David Axelrod.
“George,” said Axelrod, “ I’m not going to throw a figure out here. What he said is, he wants a plan big enough to deal with the large challenges we face.”
Axelrod got the same question at Fox News Sunday and kept it vague there too: “Well, as he (Obama) said yesterday, the economic recovery plan we are going to bring in January has to be big enough to deal with the huge problem we face.”
Host Chris Wallace tried once more, on the congressional side, with House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer. $300 billion? $500 billion?
Obama Announces New Economic Team
“I’m not talking about numbers right now, Chris,” Hoyer said. “We’re going to have to determine that.”
The only Obama representative or lawmaker to put his name to a figure was New York Sen. Charles Schumer who said on ABC: “I think it has to be deep. I would -- my view has to be between $500 and $700 billion. And that’s because our economy’s in serious, serious trouble.”
Meanwhile, James Baker, a former Secretary of State and Treasury Secretary under the first President Bush, said joint action by the incoming and outgoing administrations could go a long way to restoring confidence of the markets and the public.
Noting the bad timing of a crisis of the current magnitude during a transition, Baker said on NBC’s “Meet the Press:” Something very useful might even come out of the two of them sitting down together and addressing not the, not the midterm, not the mid and long-term problem that we face . . . but addressing stability of our financial system and to see if there isn’t something that they could do jointly, together, over the next 58 to 60 days that would help us make sure that the financial system is stabilized and, secure.”
“I think just the mere fact of their sitting down together and seeing if there’s not one thing that they could come together on would do a lot to restore confidence and remove the anxiety and fear that’s out there,” Baker said.
But William Daley, who was Commerce Secretary in the Clinton administration and is now advising Obama’s transition team, threw cold water on that idea.
“I don’t think there’s a meeting that’s going to give the confidence that Jim is talking about,” Daley said. “I think what’s going to take place is you’re going to have the confidence by the actions of this administration in consultation with the president-elect, and then President-elect Obama, as he has done, telling his team, “Quickly, in 60 days, put together a plan that we can pass, even before I become president.”
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