A Look at the New Congress' New Agenda
Friday, January 02, 2009SUSIE GHARIB: Next week will be busy in Washington, DC. President-Elect Barack Obama is returning to the nation's capital just two weeks before his inauguration. On Tuesday, the 111th Congress will be sworn in. And as Dana Bate reports, lawmakers will hit the ground running.
DANA BATE, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: Congress' first priority will be to tackle the $700 billion gorilla: a stimulus package lawmakers hope to have on President Barack Obama's desk by January 20. But tax expert Anne Mathias thinks completing a package that big in two weeks is unlikely. Instead, she and other analysts think the stimulus will come in installments.
ANNE MATHIAS, DIRECTOR OF POLICY RESEARCH, THE STANFORD GROUP: The first one at this point will focus mostly on improving aid to individual homeowners with their mortgages and creating jobs through some sort of infrastructure, at least the beginning of infrastructure spending.
BATE: An economic recovery package will deal with the immediate concerns of job losses and a slowing economy. But political economist Tom Gallagher says there are even bigger issues looming on the horizon.
TOM GALLAGHER, POLITICAL ECONOMIST, INTERNATIONAL STRATEGY AND INVESTMENT: The short-term agenda is to deal with the economic drag caused by the financial crisis. Then the medium term agenda, just a little ways out, is to re-regulate the financial sector. First you put out the fire, then you rebuild a fire-proof house.
BATE: Rebuilding that fireproof house will require re-writing massive amounts of legislation. Could this be the most active Congress we've seen since the great depression? The Cato Institute's Chris Edwards isn't so sure.
CHRIS EDWARDS, TAX DIRECTOR, CATO INSTITUTE: I think Congress has fundamentally changed since the 1930s, when President Roosevelt was able to get massive pieces of legislation through Congress pretty quickly. Congress will descend, I think, into its usual gridlock, which is not necessarily a bad thing.
BATE: The stimulus bill could face opposition from Republicans and conservative Democrats who see the plan as fertile ground for pork barrel projects. And Mathias says the package may not turn the economy around overnight. The country already employs about two and a half million people in infrastructure jobs. And the Obama team has talked about doubling that number.
MATHIAS: Do we have those people? Where are they? We're going to need to find them and train them. Do they live in the right places? This is a lot more complicated than just moving money to the states.
BATE: Obama is scheduled to meet with Democratic and Republican leaders Monday to discuss details and timing of a stimulus package. Democrats say they need to see Obama's plan before they move forward with legislation. Dana Bate, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT, Washington.
