Theme Of President's Economic Report: Rescue, Rebalance, and Rebuild

By Benny Martinez - University of New Mexico/Talk Radio News Service

On Thursday, Council of Economic Advisers Chair Christina Romer presented President Barack Obama's 2010 Economic Report.

The report, scheduled to be delivered to Congress today, detailed the many obstacles the country must overcome in order to avoid another recessionary period.

Romer said the report's theme is one that directly reflects the status of this country; Rescue, Rebalance and Rebuild. She also said that, over the past year, the President has been looking to implement this theme with the jobs and health reform bills.

"[The President] has sought to rescue the economy from immediate crisis, rebalance the economy and begin the process of rebuilding the economy on a stronger foundation of quality, affordable health care, better education and job training, clean energy and innovation," Romer said.

In the report, the President estimates a hike in jobs created per month to 95,000, a number many of his critics believe is far fetched. Romer said she believes the uptick to be consistent with other forecasts.

Romer also said that initiatives like the jobs and wages tax credit, the energy retrofit program and small business lending will be particularly effective in materializing the 95,000 estimate.

"It's our best estimate going forward," Romer said. "I think what the President is going to do is to put in place the best that we can, working with Congress, and then see if we can get better performance. That of course, would be what all of us are hoping for."

A Savior for Jobs in America?

By Courtney Ann Jackson- Talk Radio News

The Council on Economic Advisers reports that they will be monitoring the saving and changing of jobs in the United States on individual state basis.
 
The CEA this year will report to Congress on all estimates of jobs saved and created. The estimates will be combined with numbers from state by state reports.

An unnamed senior administration official said they are going to “be monitoring every state, every county, finding out what’s happening in terms of the actual reporting of where the jobs are being created and how things are going.”

A January report said that 3.5 million jobs would be saved as a result of the program under the Recovery Act. The official said those estimates have not changed “in terms of what the program is going to do.”

The program is expected to fulfill its original promises, the official said. “We are seeing unemployment interestingly throughout the spectrum,” the official said. The effects have crossed over into a variety of industries and geographic groups. The CEA hopes to receive description of exactly what types of jobs are being created when they receive the individual state reports.

The report spells out the general principles of how the states will be asked to report on the specifics of their progress. The official said it is important to see how each state’s projects and progress compares across the country. That is the type of information the CEA hopes to gain with the direct reports.

Secretary of Commerce Gutierrez speaks at 'America Wins With Trade' campaign

Today at the History Center in St. Paul, the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) held an event for its campaign "America Wins With Trade." Speakers included Secretary of Commerce, Carlos Gutierrez, former Chair of the House Rules Committee, Representative David Dreier (R-CA), and Rhett Dawson, President of the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI).

The "America Wins With Trade" campaign is aiming to encourage Congress to work on the Panama, South Korea, and Colombia trade agreements. Jason Oxman, CEA's Senior Vice President of Industry Affairs, said that CEA represents around 2,200 US companies that want their business to grow, and such free trade agreements would enable this to happen.

Rep. Dreier spoke concerning the problems of "raw politics" preventing the trade agreements from being made, even though in the case of Colombia he claimed that many Democratic congressmen did wish to ally with the nation. He said that it was a "tragedy" that bipartisanship had broken down over the issue of trade in Congress, and he called for Democrats to join with Republicans and work for the common interest of American workers and consumers. Dreier struck a political note when asked about the Democratic Presidential nominee, Senator Barack Obama (D-IL), saying that he hadn't heard anything positive from Obama on the issue of trade, and that Republican nominee Senator John McCain (R-AZ) was the only one who "passionately embraced the issue of free trade."

Secretary Gutierrez, when asked on the importance of free trade agreements to the United States' world standing, said that "we need to be seen as a reliable partner," and that the US needs to engage the world and be committed to a free trading system. He made the importance of trade clear when he said that trade made up much of the US's GDP in the second quarter, and such projects as residential construction have relied on it. In relation to the proposed Colombia trade agreement in particular, Gutierrez stated that Colombia has been a "tremendous ally," and that it is a mistake not to have a full trade agreement with the nation when such agreements exist with other South American countries like Mexico, Chile, Peru, and the Dominican Republic.