Obama increases jobs goal to 3M

December 21, 2008 at 12:00a.m.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Barack Obama has increased his employment goal with the nation’s economic outlook worsening, seeking to create or save 3 million jobs in the next two years instead of the 2.5 million he proposed last month.

Obama set the more ambitious target earlier this week after meeting with top economic advisers who cautioned that the nation’s unemployment rate could exceed 9 percent given the current pace of job losses, Obama transition officials said Saturday.

During the presidential campaign, Obama pledged to create or save 1 million jobs. He increased that goal to 2.5 million over two years just last month.

Obama and his family traveled Saturday to his home state of Hawaii for a two-week vacation. But advisers were using Obama’s guidance as a road map for a draft stimulus package to have ready when he returns Jan. 2, advisers said.

Obama met with Vice President-elect Joe Biden and his economic leadership team Tuesday in Chicago.

Transition officials said Christina Romer, an economics professor whom Obama has chosen as chairwoman of his Council of Economic Advisers, opened the meeting by arguing that historical data and wide-ranging expert opinions suggest that upcoming economic problems could be more severe than anything the country has faced over the past half-century. She said the country is likely to lose an additional 3 million to 4 million jobs over the next year without significant action.

Biden and Obama responded by pushing for a more ambitious jobs plan, driven by federal investments in health care, education and energy that could have a stimulative effect and lay the groundwork for long-term reform and a more sustainable economy.

Obama’s team and congressional staff over the last week have been scrambling to come up with details of a plan to pump up the droopy economy with $650 billion or more in government spending over the next few years.

The aides met in the basement of the Capitol on Friday to devise ways to pump public money into science, energy, education, health care and infrastructure programs, as well as to help the poor and unemployed.

Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress want to enact the still-emerging plan as soon as possible after he takes office Jan. 20.

The plan, which some Obama aides think could swell to about $850 billion after negotiations with Congress, would be the largest investment in public infrastructure since the federal highway system was established in the 1950s.

Biden, speaking in an interview set to air today, said he believed there will be another stimulus package of roughly $700 billion to keep the economy from “absolutely tanking.”

“The economy is in much worse shape than we thought it was in,” Biden told ABC’s “This Week,” according to excerpts released Friday.