Obama Says Not a ‘Moment to Spare’ on Stimulus Plan

Remember when the Bush Administration was saying there was no time to examine the details about the $700 billion bank rescue plan?  Then this should sound familiar.

Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

President Obama, with Sam Palmisano of IBM and other business leaders, spoke about the economy at the White House on Wednesday.

From the NY TIMES

By DAVID STOUT

Published: January 28, 2009

WASHINGTON — Declaring that “we don’t have a moment to spare,” President Obama on Wednesday pushed hard for passage of his economic stimulus plan, promising that it would be not just enormous in scope but run with a transparency and accountability not always associated with huge Washington projects.

“We’ll invest in what works,” the president said after what he called “a sober meeting” with prominent business executives at the White House to discuss not just the immediate economic crisis but the ability of America to compete in the global marketplace in the 21st century.

Hours before the House was expected to approve his program of well over $800 billion, largely along partisan lines and in the face of heavy criticism, Mr. Obama tried to convey his message far beyond the corridors of the Capitol and into boardrooms and living rooms. The future of the American economy rests less in his hands than it does “with American companies and workers,” Mr. Obama said.

“They are the ones whose efforts and ideas will determine our economic destiny, just as they always have,” the president said. “For in the end, it’s businesses, large and small, that generate the jobs, provide the salaries and serve as the foundation on which the American people’s lives and dreams depend.”

The numbers in the president’s program, while astronomical, seemed to defy precision. Accountants at theCongressional Budget Office recalculated the cost, putting it at $816 billion rather than the $825 billion often used. But in a voice vote on Wednesday, House Democrats added $3 billion for mass transit.

The White House meeting was part of an aggressive promotional campaign by the president and his top aides. Congressional leaders of both parties were invited to cocktails at the White House Wednesday evening. On Monday, Mr. Obama took the unusual step of going to the Capitol to try to win support for his program.

The president said on Wednesday that the country faces “times more trying than any we have seen in a long, long while” as he alluded to the latest staggering round of layoffs, announced on Monday by some of the nation’s biggest, and hitherto most profitable, corporations.

But in the face of the bad news, he sought to project a feeling of optimism as he confronts his first big challenge, one that could set the momentum for his first year in office and, perhaps, help determine his place in history.

“We left the meeting confident we can turn our economy around,” Mr. Obama said of Wednesday morning’s gathering, which included Sam Palmisano and David Cote, the chairmen and chief executives of I.B.M. andHoneywell, respectively. Richard D. Parsons, who was recently named chairman ofCitigroup, was also among the executives at the White House.

Mr. Obama said Americans were expecting, and had a right to expect, “bold and swift action” from their government, whose mission is to create an atmosphere in which “workers can prosper, businesses can thrive and the economy can grow.”

That kind of language is often embraced by business-friendly Republicans, and indeed Mr. Obama has reached out to Republican lawmakers in an effort to signal his willingness to compromise on some components of his plan, which he said on Wednesday would be sweeping enough to invest in areas as disparate as roads, alternative energy projects, better schools and new technology.

The president said, as he has repeatedly, that he envisions money going “out the door immediately,” once Congress acts, helping to create three million to four million jobs, most of them in private enterprise.

“Corporate America will have to accept its own responsibility to workers and the American public,” Mr. Obama said, after alluding to an “atmosphere of irresponsibility” on Wall Street and in Washington that he said had helped push the economy toward ruin. He said, too, that he understands the skepticism that some people feel about the prospect of spending astronomical sums of the taxpayers’ money efficiently. Therefore, he said, his administration will put in place “unprecedented measures,” including Internet postings, to allow the American people to see where the streams of dollars are flowing.

Mr. Palmisano and Mr. Cote spoke enthusiastically of the president’s plan. “Now is not the time to be timid,” Mr. Cote said with Mr. Obama beside him. “Thank God you are not a timid man.”

The president has been hoping for wide, bipartisan support for his program, but some Republicans have found fault with it, criticizing among other things a tax credit for the middle class that would also benefit workers who earn so little that they do not pay income taxes, even though they are subject to the payroll taxes for Social Security andMedicare.

Even if Mr. Obama’s plan meets stiff Republican opposition in the House, it is still expected to pass, given the Democrats 255-to-178 advantage. (There are two vacancies.) The Senate, where the Democrats’ advantage was also increased by the November elections, is expected to debate economic stimulus measures next week.

Despite the Democrats’ advantage in the House, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the Republican minority leader, seemed unwilling to concede defeat. Many Republicans are worried about billions in domestic spending on programs that have “nothing to do with creating jobs or preserving jobs,” Mr. Boehner said in ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

Moreover, the Senate’s Republican minority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, has said that he and his colleagues will seek changes in whatever package comes over from the House.

But Mr. Obama said he was confident his recovery program would become reality. In promising that it would be run with openness and accountability, the president quotedSupreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who said, “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.” Coincidentally, Brandeis was nominated by President Woodrow Wilson on Jan. 28, 1916.