Obama, Pelosi to Discuss Scope of Economic Package
WASHINGTON: President-elect Barack Obama will meet with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Monday as Congress prepares to reconvene and debate a massive recovery plan for the nation’s struggling economy, according to Democratic sources. The face-to-face meeting between two of the nation’s top Democrats will be one of the president-elect’s first acts after relocating his family to a hotel in Washington over the weekend.
Sources said Obama and Pelosi will discuss the scope and timing of the economic recovery package, which Obama has said will be his first priority upon being sworn into office. Pelosi has said her goal is to have the legislation on the new president’s desk and ready to be signed on Jan. 20.
But that schedule appears increasingly likely to slip, as Republicans and conservative Democrats are raising concerns about the impact on the federal deficit of spending hundreds of billions on an array of projects with little vetting by Congress.
Lawmakers now expect a spending package of between $675 billion and $775 billion.
And a top congressional aide said yesterday that Democratic leaders in the House are still waiting for a detailed proposal to be delivered by Obama’s economic advisers before lawmakers can begin the process of turning it into legislation.
Even so, congressional Democrats are anxious to get the process started so that a vote can take place in the House as early as the week of Jan. 12. Pelosi announced yesterday that the first hearing on the plan will take place Wednesday.
In a letter to Democratic House members, she wrote that the hearing will focus on “the need to act with deliberate speed to safeguard as many as three million jobs by making needed investments in infrastructure, alternative energy, science and other emerging sectors and providing middle-class tax cuts to help make work pay.”-SANA
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