President-Elect Barack Obama held his second press conference since the election this morning to announce appointments to his Economic team.
Timothy Geithner, current New York Federal Reserve President and former Senior Treasure Department official, will be nominated for Secretary of the Treasury, replacing Henry Paulson.
Larry Summers, former Treasury Secretary under Clinton and former Harvard University President, will head the National Economic Council.
Christina Romer, currently a Berkeley University economics professor, will chair the President’s Council of Economic Advisors. Ms. Romer is also an Economic Historian and expert on the Great Depression.
Melody Barnes, Obama friend and colleague and former Executive Vice President for Policy at the Center for American Progress will be named Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, coordinating the domestic policy making process and dealing with issues such as education, immigration and criminal justice as well as health care reform, working closely with Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Daschle.
Mr. Obama also announced that Congress will be working with the transition team to pass an economic stimulus package before his inauguration so that it will be waiting for his signature on January 20, 2009 when he takes the reins of the US government.
Still no official word on Senator Clinton’s possible move to the State Department or New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson’s move to the Department of Commerce today.
After his announcements, President-Elect Obama took questions from the press. Most of the answers were things we have heard before. The stimulus package will have both immediate and long-term goals. He plans to create 2.5 million jobs in 2 years and invest in energy, health care and education. He would not give a specific monetary total for the stimulus package.
Mr. Obama would not commit to whether the Bush tax cuts to the wealthy would be repealed or allowed to expire, but did reiterate that the cuts are necessary in order to pay for his proposed tax cuts to the middle class.
The President-Elect expressed surprise that the auto makers did not come to Congress last week with a better proposal, but agrees that their survival is important to the US economy.
He is in communication with President Bush and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke about the financial crisis and expressed his view that it is now a global crisis, not just an American crisis.
President-Elect Obama will be speaking again tomorrow.