November 25, 2008 Obama: Stimulus bill should focus on jobs, infrastructure Play video

(Peter Howe, NECN) - President-elect Barack Obama unveils the top members of his future cabinet. The president of the New York Federal Reserve - Timothy Geithner will serve as treasury secretary. Harvard president, and former treasury secretary Lawrence Summers will be director of his national economic council.

Obama also gave his approval of the Bush administration's bailout of the financial industry, and pledged to help troubled automakers, once they've made public plans for their long-term viability. He is urging the new, incoming congress to pass a new economic stimulus bill.

Obama: "Creating and saving 2.5 million jobs, jobs rebuilding our infrastructure, our roads, bridges, modernizing our schools and creating the clean energy infrastructure of the 21st century .... ''

That's just some of what President-elect Barack Obama is looking for in another federal economic stimulus bill -- and in a hurry. "It is my hope that the Congress will begin aggressively and enact a recovery plan so we can hit the ground running when we take office in January.'' But how many dollars? He's ducking that for now: "It is going to be of a size and scope that is necessary to get this economy back on track. I don't want to get into numbers right now.''

The president-elect made a point of defining infrastructure very broadly. Not just traditional road and bridge replacement projects like this new ramp on Storrow Drive in Boston, but a whole range of other government

investments in future capital. Ian Bowles, Massachusetts secretary of energy and environmental affairs, was thrilled to hear clean energy right up there with roads and bridges. "You could do a huge amount of economic stimulus for the clean energy industry if you were putting large funds towards subsidizing solar power,'' Bowles said, or "towards helping modernize our electricity grid to allow more wind development ... I think what you're seeing now in the discussion is if we're going to make this large investment, let's align it with our energy and environmental priorities and make as green a stimulus package as possible.''

Mark Zandi, chief economist with Moody's economy.com, is urging Obama to add state governments to his stimulus list. "One kind of stimulus, good efficacious stimulus, would be help the state governments get through these budgetary problems so that they don't have to make those cuts, they don't have to raise taxes right now,'' Zandi said in an interview with NECN. "That would be, I think, very important stimulus.'' And it all up and this could be hundreds of billions, even a trillion dollars, especially given how high the incoming president thinks a new stimulus bill must aim: "Not only do I want this stimulus package to address the immediate crisis, I want it to lay the groundwork for long term economic growth.''