Obama To Speed Up Stimulus Spending
President Obama is set to announce today that the administration is ramping up stimulus spending this summer, with a targeted goal of saving or creating more than 600,000 jobs. “We have a long way to go on our road to recovery but we are going the right way,” Obama will say, according to prepared remarks.
Obama’s Day Ahead: Meeting With The Cabinet
President Obama will be meeting with his Cabinet at 11:45 a.m. ET, after the morning’s routine briefings with advisers. The big subject of the Cabinet meeting will be implementation of the Recovery Act, after reports over the weekend that Obama was going to ask his administration for specific goals to ramp up stimulus spending.
Biden’s Day Ahead
Vice President Biden will have private meetings this morning in Washington. He will attend President Obama’s meeting with the Cabinet, to discuss stimulus implementation. He will then have private meetings for the remainder of the day.
NYT: Summers Guides Administration Economic Policy — With Some Tension
In a New York Times profile of Larry Summers, the chief White House economic adviser is presented as the center of serious tensions within internal debates on economic policy, frequently debating other advisers during meetings — a point that Summers stands by. “My approach in these things is to always be raising objections and concerns,” he said, “because if you haven’t anticipated the objections and concerns, you haven’t minimized risks.”
Government To Allow Banks To Repay Money
The Washington Post reports that the Obama Administration is set to announce as soon as today that it will allow some bailed-out banks to repay billions in federal aid. “The fact that the regulators feel good enough to take the money back is clearly more confirmation that they’re feeling good about things. But they could be wrong,” said Douglas Elliott of the Brookings Institution. “There’s still a lot of potential for this to turn out to be a significantly worse problem than it appears to be at the moment.”
Insurance Industry Backs Health Reform — With Individual Mandate
The Los Angeles Times reports that the health insurance industry has increasingly come around to supporting comprehensive health care reform — namely through the form of an individual mandate to require that people purchase health insurance. “I think that’s why we’ve seen the industry basically trying to play the administration’s game,” said Jane DuBose, an analyst with industry tracking firm HealthLeaders-InterStudy. “They really could be licking their chops over the potential here.”
Abortion Battle Shifts To State Level
The Washington Post reports that the fight over abortion restrictions has now shifted to the state level in places like Mississippi and South Dakota, with Democratic dominance in Congress and the White House spurring anti-abortion activists to focus on more feasible goals at the local level. “All-or-nothing means nothing,” said Terri Herring, head of Mississippi’s Pro-Life America Network. “Incremental means something.”
