The Clarion

Issue date: 1/14/09 Section: News

When he takes office on Jan. 20, Barack Obama will inherit a country in the throes of recession, with record unemployment rates and a federal debt that has surpassed a trillion dollars. In an attempt to turn the United States' floundering economy around, Obama has introduced an economic stimulus package to Congress.

In a Jan. 9 press conference held at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., Obama outlined some of the details of his plan, dubbed The American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan, a stimulus package with a cost estimated to exceed $800 billion. In his statement, Obama stressed his belief that swift action is necessary on the part of the government to prevent further job losses and growing deficits.

"It is true that we cannot depend on government alone to create jobs and long-term growth," Obama stated, "but at this particular moment, only government can provide the short-term boost necessary to lift us from a recession this deep and severe."

According to Obama's statement, The American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan includes plans to invest in infrastructure, schools, the healthcare system and alternative energy. Also included in the plan is a $3,000 tax credit for business owners hiring or retraining new employees and a payroll tax cut for working families making less than $200,000 annually.

Obama further stated his intention to pass the plan rapidly, pledging to work with Congress, "day and night, on weekends if necessary," to approve a plan within the next few weeks.

Obama said, "I'm calling on all Americans, Democrats and Republicans and Independents, to put good ideas ahead of the old ideological battles. A sense of common purpose above the same narrow partisanship, and insist that the first question each of us asks isn't, 'What's good for me?' but, 'What's good for the country my children will inherit?'"

However, Obama's plan has been met with some criticism, including from members of his own party. Fellow Democrat Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota called the $3,000 tax credit "misdirected."

"If I'm a business person, it's unlikely if you give me a several-thousand-dollar credit that I'm going to hire people if I can't sell the products they're producing," Conrad said.

Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) also spoke out against the tax credit. "I'd rather spend the money on the infrastructure, on direct investment, on energy conversion, on other kinds of things that much more directly, much more rapidly and much more certainly create a real job." Other critics of the plan have noted that the proposed payroll tax cut of $1,000 for working families would only amount to $20 per paycheck.

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