Published: November 23, 2008 01:55 pm         

Obama aide promotes job plan, warns automakers

WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama wants the new Congress to approve massive spending and fresh tax cuts in January, “a big number” probably far distancing a $175 billion campaign proposal, so he can sign it after taking office, top aides said Sunday.

Obama over the weekend outlined the framework of a plan to save or create 2.5 million jobs by the end of 2010 and prepared to introduce leaders of his economic team Monday. Aides said they soon would fill in the details and Democratic lawmakers, already working with transition officials, pledged to act quickly when Congress convenes Jan. 6, two weeks before the inauguration.

“We don’t have time to waste here, “ Obama senior adviser David Axelrod said. “We want to hit the ground running on January 20th.” Echoing that, the second-ranking House Democrat, Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, said, ‘We expect to have during the first couple of weeks of January a package for the president’s consideration when he takes office.”

Axelrod also warned automakers, seeking billions in government help to stave off collapse, to devise a plan to retool and restructure. Otherwise, he said, “there is very little taxpayers can do to help them.”

During the campaign Obama had proposed a $175 billion economic recovery package. The new one will be significantly larger and would incorporate his campaign ideas for new jobs in environmentally friendly technologies — the “green economy.” It also would include his proposals for tax relief for middle- and lower-income workers.

But aides said the plan would not offer an immediate tax increase on wealthy taxpayers. During the campaign, Obama said he would pay for increased tax relief by raising taxes on people making more than $250,000.

“There won’t be any tax increases in the January package,” said one Obama aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the details of the Obama package have not been fleshed out.

Obama could delay any tax increase to 2011, when current Bush administration tax cuts expire.

House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio urged Obama to make that explicit. “Why wouldn’t we have the president-elect say, ‘I am not going to raise taxes on any American in my first two years in office?”’

Advisers would not discuss a specific size of the new plan, though some economists have endorsed spending up to $600 billion to revive the economy. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., suggested $500 billion to $700 billion.

“I don’t know what the number is going to be, but it’s going to be a big number,” Obama economic adviser Austan Goolsbee said. “It has to be. The point is to, kind of, get people back on track and startle the thing into submission.”