President Barack Obama sees a chink of light for the world’s biggest economy after hustling through an enormous stimulus package and ordering far-reaching reforms in his first 100 days.
Economic revival is the centerpiece of the Democratic leader’s young presidency, the benchmark by which his administration will be judged as the United States endures its worst recession since World War II.
“There are still serious problems in this economy,” top White House economic adviser Larry Summers said Sunday on Fox News.
“But both with respect to the financial side and … with respect to the income side, the measures we’ve taken I think are very strong and offer the prospect of containing a very serious situation,” he said.
So far, the public has remained on side despite a relentless rise in unemployment to 25-year highs, staggering rates of home foreclosures and a budget deficit that looks set to reach nearly two trillion dollars this year.
At his first cabinet meeting last week, Obama acknowledged the unprecedented scale of government intervention seen since his January 20 inauguration.
“We have had to take some extraordinary steps in order to shore up our financial system and deal with an unprecedented economic crisis, and as a consequence we have had to spend a significant amount of money,” he said.
“That was the right thing to do,” he said, while commanding his government to cut 100 million dollars from the federal budget within 90 days — a figure mocked by Republicans as a derisory drop in the ocean.
However, the opposition party’s intensifying attacks against Obama have yet to resonate with the public, even as the president starts to take on long-term economic challenges such as climate change and tax policy.
In a mid-April poll by CNN/Opinion Research Corp., 58 percent of respondents said the president had a clear plan to deal with the recession — well more than double the 24 percent who thought the same of the Republicans.
Before Obama’s inauguration, only 19 percent said the country was on the right track. Now the figure is 50 percent, said a Washington Post-ABC News survey out Sunday.
“In the eyes of Americans, Obama’s top achievement to date involves the US economy — whether the economic stimulus plan and industry bailouts specifically, or improvement to the economy generally,” Gallup pollsters said.
While stressing the parlous situation inherited from president George W. Bush, Obama is now able to point to tentative signs of recovery in data on house sales, home building and consumer spending.
“By no means are we out of the woods just yet. But from where we stand, for the very first time, we are beginning to see glimmers of hope,” he said in an April 14 speech.
The keystone of Obama’s recovery strategy was the 787-billion-dollar stimulus package passed in February in the teeth of Republican opposition.
The stimulus and subsequent policy announcements have laid bare the reach of Obama’s ambition to remake the US economy — from ending the nation’s addiction to foreign oil to enacting universal health care and fixing Wall Street.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has battled in Obama’s first 100 days to get to grips with the scale of the US banking crisis after a series of costly and politically unpalatable bailouts.
The bailouts triggered perhaps the worst political controversy yet of the new presidency when it emerged that rescued insurer American International Group had rewarded executives with lavish bonuses.
Obama’s administration has also ordered the US auto industry to go back to the drawing board on its rehabilitation plans — but is hinting that the process may yet end in bankruptcy for General Motors or Chrysler.
Copyright © 2009 AFP
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