Obama’s Economic Rescue Package Starts To Take Shape
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in 2008 Election, Barack, Economy, VideoFormer Treasury Secretary Larry Summers discusses some broad overarching points on the Today show…
Quick prediction…Larry Summers will be Treasury Secretary. Yes, he definitely has baggage, but he’s well respected in his field and is enough of a conservative economic voice that he’ll help steady the markets. Also, I know at least one right winger who might approve since they dated.
In any event, over at Obama’s new transition website, Change.gov, there are loads of details about what we can expect, and I’m only going to focus on the “Jumpstart The Economy” section because I think that’s the legislation we’ll see first…
Enact a Windfall Profits Tax to Provide a $1,000 Emergency Energy Rebate to American Families: Barack Obama and Joe Biden will enact a windfall profits tax on excessive oil company profits to give American families an immediate $1,000 emergency energy rebate to help families pay rising bills. This relief would be a down payment on the Obama-Biden long-term plan to provide middle-class families with at least $1,000 per year in permanent tax relief.Provide $50 billion to Jumpstart the Economy and Prevent 1 Million Americans from Losing Their Jobs: This relief would include a $25 billion State Growth Fund to prevent state and local cuts in health, education, housing, and heating assistance or counterproductive increases in property taxes, tolls or fees. The Obama-Biden relief plan will also include $25 billion in a Jobs and Growth Fund to prevent cutbacks in road and bridge maintenance and fund school re pair – all to save more than 1 million jobs in danger of being cut.
So nothing new here, but I think it’s a wise decision to enact immediate measures to make sure we don’t slip any further. And once the slide has stopped we can focus on bolder legislation like the green economy initiatives we’ve been hearing about.
More as it develops…
This entry was posted on Friday, November 7th, 2008 and is filed under 2008 Election, Barack, Economy, Video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
November 7th, 2008 at 10:27 am
Unfortunately there is really no immediate measures left, the fed already tried them all, no what is left is fiscal policy, which is a bit more long term, anything they enact would take about 4-6 months to make a dent, no What Obama needs to do is to reassure the people, that help is on the way, that smart leadership is coming to help them. Hopefully that will boost the animal spirits and keep the economy from plunging at this precarious time.
November 7th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
Summers has too much baggage. I’ll go with Timothy Geithner for Treasury. And I won’t be sorry to see the door hit Paulson on the way out.