Your Weekly Address from the President-elect

President-elect Barack Obama announces he has directed his economic team to assemble an Economic Recovery Plan that will save or create 2.5 million more jobs by January of 2011. For more informatio...

Obama Vows Swift Action on Vast Economic Stimulus Plan

WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama signaled on Saturday that he would pursue a far more ambitious plan of spending and tax cuts than anything he outlined on the campaign trail, setting the tone for a recovery effort that could absorb and define much of his term.

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Gerald Herbert/Associated Press

Senator Harry Reid said urgent economic steps were needed.

Video: Obama’s Address (change.gov)

In the Democrats’ weekly radio address, Mr. Obama said he would direct his economic team to craft a two-year stimulus plan with the goal of saving or creating 2.5 million jobs. He said it would be “a plan big enough to meet the challenges we face.”

Mr. Obama said he hoped to sign the stimulus package into law soon after taking office on Jan. 20. He is already coordinating efforts with Democratic leaders in Congress, who have said they will begin work next month.

Advisers to Mr. Obama say they want to use the economic crisis as an opportunity to act on many of the issues he emphasized in his campaign, including cutting taxes for lower- and middle-class workers, addressing neglected public infrastructure projects like roads and schools, and creating “green jobs” through business incentives for energy alternatives and environmentally friendly technologies.

In light of the downturn, Mr. Obama is also said to be reconsidering a key campaign pledge: his proposal to repeal the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. According to several people familiar with the discussions, he might instead let those tax cuts expire as scheduled in 2011, effectively delaying any tax increase while he gives his stimulus plan a chance to work.

“The news this week has only reinforced the fact that we are facing an economic crisis of historic proportions,” Mr. Obama said in his address. “We now risk falling into a deflationary spiral that could increase our massive debt even further.”

His address, a video of which was made available on YouTube, was part of an effort to calm financial markets roiled by the failure of an outgoing president and a lame-duck Congress to come up with a plan to lift the economy and restore investor confidence.

On Monday, Mr. Obama plans to introduce his economic team, starting with his Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner. News that Mr. Geithner, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, would get the job helped send the stock market up by nearly 500 points on Friday after days of sharp losses.

Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers is to be the director of the National Economic Council in the White House, the president’s principal economic adviser and policy coordinator, according to an Obama aide.

The economic team will also include Peter R. Orszag, the head of the Congressional Budget Office, who will be the next White House budget director.

Mr. Summers, who served as a campaign adviser to Mr. Obama, has advocated for a forceful stimulus plan in recent newspaper columns, saying the federal government should be doing more, not less, in areas like health care, energy, education and tax relief. Mr. Obama seemed to echo those thoughts in his radio address.

“We’ll be working out the details in the weeks ahead,” Mr. Obama said, “but it will be a two-year, nationwide effort to jumpstart job creation in America and lay the foundation for a strong and growing economy. We’ll put people back to work rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges, modernizing schools that are failing our children, and building wind farms and solar panels, fuel-efficient cars and the alternative energy technologies that can free us from our dependence on foreign oil and keep our economy competitive in the years ahead.”

Mr. Obama’s announcement came after market declines and the prospect of a collapse by automakers and other storied companies had sparked growing criticism last week that he was sitting on the sidelines.

Although advisers say they have not begun to fill in the details, Mr. Obama’s proposal would go beyond the $175 billion stimulus plan he proposed in October. That included a $3,000 tax credit to employers for each new hire above their current work force and billions in aid to states and cities.

Separately, Democratic leaders in Congress have been calling for a robust economic recovery initiative of up to $300 billion, including major investments in infrastructure to create jobs. President Bush has refused to consider a package so large, but even some conservative economists have said $300 billion is the minimum needed to spur the economy.

“There are no quick or easy fixes to this crisis, which has been many years in the making,” Mr. Obama said Saturday. “And it’s likely to get worse before it gets better.

“But January 20th is our chance to begin anew, with a new direction, new ideas and new reforms that will create jobs and fuel long-term economic growth.”

(By JACKIE CALMES and JEFF ZELENY/nytimes)

Jihadi Leader Says Radicals Share Obama Victory *

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The leader of a jihadi group in Iraq argued Friday that the election of Barack Obama as president represented a victory for radical Islamic groups that had battled American forces since the invasion of Iraq.

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Back Story With The Times's Michael Slackman

The statement, which experts said was part of the psychological duel with the United States, was included in a 25-minute audiotaped speech by Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, leader of the Islamic State of Iraq, an umbrella organization that claims ties to Al Qaeda. Mr. Baghdadi’s statement was posted on a password-protected Web site called Al Hesbah, used to disseminate information to Islamic radicals.

In his address, Mr. Baghdadi also said that the election of Mr. Obama — and the rejection of the Republican candidate, Senator John McCain — was a victory for his movement, a claim that has already begun to resonate among the radical faithful. In so doing Mr. Baghdadi highlighted the challenge the new president would face as he weighed how to remove troops from Iraq without also giving movements like Al Qaeda a powerful propaganda tool to use for recruiting.

“And the other truth that politicians are embarrassed to admit,” Mr. Baghdadi said, “is that their unjust war on the houses of Islam, with its heavy and successive losses and the continuous operations of exhaustion of your power and your economy, were the principal cause of the collapse of the economic giant.”

The audio statement came amid a very public discussion in the Middle East over what Mr. Obama’s election meant for the future — and what it said about the past. Most of the public reaction, in newspapers and on television and radio stations, was euphoric, with many commentators marveling at the election of a black man whose father was from a Muslim family. There was a general assessment that Mr. Obama’s election was a repudiation of the course taken by President Bush and his inner circle over the past eight years.

“Obama’s election was a message against such destruction, against unjustified wars, wars that are fought with ignorance and rashness, without knowledge of their arenas or the shape of their surroundings,” wrote Ghassan Charbel in Thursday’s issue of the Saudi-owned, pan-Arab daily newspaper Al Hayat. “It was a message against the pattern that became a burden on the U.S. and transformed the U.S. into a burden on the world.”

Some even pointed to Mr. Obama’s election as a lesson to the rest of the region. In Kuwait, Sheik Hamed al-Ali, an Islamic scholar known for his support of jihadi fighters, posted a message titled “We Want Change!” on his Web site.

Sheik Ali said, “It remains the obligation of our Islamic nation to benefit from this example and request change, also, and to get rid of any regime that leads with ignorance and injustice, plunders from the country, enslaves the worshipers, drives us to destruction.” The comments were then circulated on other Islamic Web forums.

But there was also a growing chorus of caution, as commentators began to try to tamp down expectations of any change in American policies in the region. And other commentators echoed Mr. Baghdadi’s view that the election was a victory for the insurgents in Iraq, the Taliban in Afghanistan, Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.

“It would be no exaggeration to say that we Arabs and Muslims were the main unseen voters who decided the outcome of these elections,” wrote Abdelbari Atwan in Wednesday’s issue of the London-based pan-Arab daily newspaper Al Quds Al Arabi.

He wrote, “The transformation that will begin in the U.S. starting today in various political, economic, military, and social domains may well have been delayed for decades, had the new American century been crowned with victory, and had the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan taken the directions sought by the neo-cons — in other words, had there been political stability and economic prosperity, and had the citizens of the two countries targeted by the U.S.’s designs been totally subjugated by it.”

Mr. Baghdadi also used his address to offer Mr. Obama an unlikely deal, one certain to do little to bring any resolution to the conflict between radical Islamic groups and the United States. He offered a truce of sorts in exchange for the removal of all forces from the region.

“On behalf of my brothers in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Chechnya, I offer you what is better for you and us: you return to your previous era of neutrality, you withdraw your forces, and you return to your homes,” Mr. Baghdadi said. “You do not interfere in the affairs of our countries, directly or indirectly. We in turn will not prevent commerce with you, whether it is in oil or otherwise, but with fairness, not at a loss.”(nytimes)

Chosen CEO Google Become The Economic Team Obama

Economic team transition compiled by Obama, for example, Robert Rubin,former Finance Minister and Economic Council Director National; Professor Larry Summers, former Rector of Harvard University, ekonom World Bank,and also the former Finance Minister second period governance Bill Clinton; Eric Schmidt, CEO And Leader Google; Paul Volcker, former Governor of Central Bank ACE a period of/to President of Carter and Reagan; Laura Tyson, former economic adviser Bill Clinton; and also Jamie Dimon, CEO
and leader of JP Morgan Chase. ( AP/AFP/CNN/ BBC / oki)

The President and the Planet, on a Budget

Obama fanBarack Obama in Berlin in July. (Credit: Jae C. Hong/ Associated Press)

President-elect Barack Obama on Jan. 20 will become the most important leader of a species that has exploded in just six generations from a total population of 1 billion (around 1830) to a point today when teenagers alone number 1 billion, a species that is on a path toward more or less 9 billion people by mid-century. In numbers, think roughly of adding two Chinas on top of the one that exists today. Expectations that he will exert planet-scale leadership are high, as indicated in this letter from Nelson Mandela to the next president.

Mr. Obama will of course be mainly focused first on economic renewal and finding a way forward in Iraq and Afghanistan. But inevitably issues related to humanity’s growth spurt — both in numbers and resource demands — will come to the fore. The Times columnist David Brooks wrote an interesting piece the other day, “A Date With Scarcity,” focused on resource and financial limits facing an American generation that came of age expecting ever more, explaining a time when “demands on the nation’s wealth outstrip the supply.” As he projected, “There will be fiercer struggles over scarce resources, starker divisions along factional lines.”

Many students of global population and resource trends say the same constraints and consequences are likely to play out on a planetary scale. Keep in mind, as I said above, that we essentially live on “Planet Teen” right now. Depending on the level of governance and economic opportunity they experience, today’s young people could either become soldiers or students, agitators or innovators, terrorists or teachers.

While global commerce and communication may be “flattening” the world, as my colleague Tom Friedman has pointed out, when mapped in terms of population trends, energy choices, vulnerability and prosperity, the planet is distinctly un-flat. The ruling class in São Paulo commutes by private helicopter from walled compounds to skyscraper roofs over a sea of congestion and poverty. Industrialized countries shield themselves from the threats posed by climate extremes with wealth and technology while the equatorial poor are alternately pounded by drought or flood.

So what’s a president to do on issues like climate, population, international development and health, particularly in an era of huge deficits and pressing real-time problems? I’d like to send Mr. Obama’s transition team your 10 best proposals, as determined by their ranking by readers using one of Dot Earth’s newest features.

Here are a couple of thoughts to prime the pump:


Defense and Development: The Pentagon has recently made fostering stability in turbulent states a top priority, on a par with maintaining the capacity to wage war. What resources and initiatives in the military might be adjusted (without new money) to advance development?

Defense and Energy: The military also has the world’s largest budget for basic research and development, to the tune of some $75 billion a year (we spend about $1 billion a year on all energy research, as I pointed out the other day). Military leaders already have energy efficiency as a top priority (much of the activity on a battlefield is focused on protecting fuel supplies).

Climate and Energy: Mr. Obama has already pledged to convene a world energy forum, somewhat akin to recent efforts by the Bush administration to bring together established and emerging powers that are the top energy users and emitters of greenhouse gases. Given the importance of abundant, clean energy supplies, and the clock ticking toward a pivotal climate-treaty conference in December 2009, many experts see this as a prime priority. Some environmental campaigners, led by Bill McKibben of 350.org, have pressed Mr. Obama or a top surrogate to attend the next climate-treaty conference, in Poland in December, even before he takes office. I’ve heard mixed reactions to that idea from seasoned experts on environmental diplomacy. (Our Green Inc. blog has European reaction related to global warming.)

Family Planning: The world has focused for years on curbing the scourge of H.I.V. in Africa, but population groups say this effort, while laudable, has raided money for family-planning programs that could cut the risk of infection and also help speed the transition out of poverty in the world’s poorest places. The graph below, from Population Action International, shows the spending trends. Can United States’ international H.I.V. policy and family planning programs be more integrated without big new investments?


spending on HIV and family planningFrom a study by Population Action International of United States investments in controlling H.I.V. and fostering family planning.(By Andrew C. Revkin/nytimes)

The UncabinetA guide to key appointments Obama should resist.

Illustration by Mark Alan Stamaty. Click image to expand.With Barack Obama's presidential victory in the bag, speculation has begun about who he'll appoint to his Cabinet. Actually, it began some time ago. Russell Baker of the New York Times many years ago invented a spectral figure called the Great Mentioner to describe how the Washington cognoscenti come to view this or that public figure as a candidate for political advancement. Sometimes the Great Mentioner passes along names under consideration by the deciding person or body. Sometimes the GM passes along names that the cognoscenti merely feel warrant consideration. Because the deliberations are secret, it's hard to know the difference (and also a lot less fun).

It used to be that you needed a lunchtime reservation at Washington's dog wagon of the moment either to learn who's on the list or to add some names yourself. Today the GM's picks, like all other human knowledge, have migrated to the Internet, where they've been democratized to a fare-thee-well. A college kid elevated Sarah Palin to the GOP's potential veep choice merely by creating a Web site. You don't even have to be American! The world is flat, and nous sommes tous Washington insiders. No harm in that. Indeed, this digitization saves Washington journalists like me a lot of time. But like the names I'd likely hear whispered over chardonnay at Acadiana, the Googled mentionees—mostly those very same names—are a hodgepodge of good prospects and bad. Somebody's got to winnow.

Back in October 1987, Paul Glastris published a deeply researched magazine piece in the Washington Monthly under the headline "The Powers That Shouldn't Be." Glastris now regrets what he says was at least one bad call: He wrote that the next Democratic president should not elevate William J. Perry to secretary of defense. Perry subsequently performed that job with admirable skill during the Clinton administration. The impact of Glastris' misjudgment was blunted by the Democrats' failure to recapture the White House in 1988—a luxury I do not enjoy as I compile my own do-not-hire list. Hoping to avoid Glastris' error, I have researched this piece perfunctorily. But caveat emptor: I cannot eliminate entirely the possibility that one or two of the judgments rendered below flunks the test of time.

State Department. Do not appoint Bill Richardson, who by some accounts is the front-runner. Obama may feel he owes Richardson because the New Mexico governor endorsed him after dropping out of the presidential race and ended up being called a "Judas" by James Carville. But Richardson took his sweet time before embracing Obama; he dropped out in mid-January and didn't cough up the endorsement until late March. Richardson's résumé includes Clinton administration stints as energy secretary and as U.N. ambassador. He didn't perform either job particularly well. As energy secretary, Richardson rashly accused Los Alamos official Wen Ho Lee of espionage—a charge later proved false. As U.N. ambassador, Richardson didn't do anything anyone can remember except offer Monica Lewinsky a job three months before the story of her affair with President Clinton hit the Internet. "He has no great beliefs," observed Slate's David Plotz in June 2000, "which may be why he didn't mind flattering despots." Richardson has twice broken the world's record for most handshakes in an eight-hour period. He's very proud of this. Don't you find that alarming?

Also, do not appoint John Kerry. The 2004 election demonstrated that nobody likes him. That isn't disqualifying for a senator, but it is for a diplomat.

Also, do not appoint Anthony Lake. He made himself unconfirmable for Central Intelligence Agency director back in 1996 in part by saying on TV that he wasn't sure Alger Hiss was guilty. Heads up: Alger Hiss was guilty. If you think Hiss wasn't guilty and you want to get confirmed by the Senate, be my guest. But don't shoot your mouth off about it, because if you do, you'll be easy prey for the GOP. Also, I have to say that anyone who performs the mental calisthenics necessary to believe Alger Hiss may have been innocent runs a substantial risk that he won't have enough additional mental energy left to run the State Department.

Supreme Court. Do not appoint Hillary Clinton. The Supreme Court needs jurists, not politicians. Plus, Bill would drive the other justices crazy.

Treasury Department. Do not appoint former Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. I explained why last week. (See "Robert Rubin's Free Ride.") Rubin has said he doesn't want the job anyway. Lawrence Summers, who succeeded Rubin, is said to be interested, but he's too closely linked to Rubin and to former Fed Chairman (and current Public Enemy No. 1) Alan Greenspan to be a wise choice. Plus, the hash Summers made out of Harvard's presidency suggested that even after holding one of the highest positions in government, Summers still was pretty clueless about getting along with other people—a crucial skill for whoever ends up managing the worst financial panic since the Great Depression.

Energy Department. Do not appoint Arnold Schwarzen)egger. The supposed reason would be that Schwarzenegger is the rare Republican ))))governor who's doing something serious about global warming. But if there's a shortage of Republican governors addressing climate change, can we really afford to remove one from state government? There's no shortage of Democrats who are at least as committed as Schwarzenegger to reducing greenhouse gases. Pick one of them.(By Timothy Noah/slate.com)

A Foreign-Policy Repair Manual Six priorities for President Obama.

Barack Obama. Click image to expand.Barack Obama"President-elect Barack Obama"—the phrase alone does more to repair the tarnished image of America in the world than any action George W. Bush might ponder taking in his final weeks of power. The very fact of a black president with multinational roots unhinges the terrorists' recruitment poster of a racist, parochial, Muslim-hating United States. It revives Europeans' trans-Atlantic dreams just as their own union seems to be foundering. It is bound to inspire reformers everywhere who seek to break through their own socio-political barriers. It revivifies America as a beacon of democracy—not through thumping arrogance and brimstone but, more elegantly and potently, by sheer example.

But President Obama will enjoy this gush of hope and favor for six months at most. After that, he'll have to earn it through his actions and policies. Here are a few suggestions:

Announce that America is back and open for diplomacy. Make a big speech to the U.N. General Assembly laying out your broad goals. This will signal that you value international institutions. Then send your personal delegate—Vice President Joe Biden or some trusted eminence like Colin Powell—to the Middle East to lay the initial groundwork for renewed Israeli-Palestinian talks (even if they go nowhere, the effort might make moderate Arabs more cooperative on other issues); open a line to Syria (offering full ties and other goodies in exchange for splitting from Iran and ceasing support for terrorists); and deliver a message to Iran (not to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad but to the real powers), offering negotiations on all disputes. Reappoint Dennis Ross, or someone like him, as permanent Middle East envoy (a slot shockingly unfilled for the last eight years). These steps alone will give the impression that the United States is once more ready to act like a serious major power.

Get out of Iraq. The Iraqis have done you a favor by insisting that a new Status of Forces Agreement include a timetable for withdrawal. Take the deal. If it turns out they were bluffing and don't really want us to go, demand dramatic, substantive progress on political unity, provincial elections, division of oil revenues, and all the other issues on which the Iraqis have yet to budge. Nobody's talking about pulling out all U.S. troops (unless, again, the Iraqis kick them out). Use the troops that remain as leverage. Bush had a decent idea when he set "benchmarks" for the Iraqi government to meet. The problem was that he didn't enforce them—he neither rewarded the Iraqis for meeting certain deadlines nor punished them for failing to hit many others. Revive the idea with sticks and carrots. The whole point of the "surge"—and of any continued U.S. military presence—was, and is, to create the conditions for achieving political objectives: a stable, self-sustaining, democratic Iraq. Set benchmarks toward that goal. If the Iraqis don't meet them, withdraw another two or three brigades; if they do meet them, keep the brigades there a little longer, if they're wanted, to help solidify the progress. The more targets the Iraqis meet, the more stable the country will become and the less they'll need us in the long run.(By Fred Kaplan/slate.com)