Obama plans second stimulus package of up to $700 bn

WASHINGTON: US President-elect Barack Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress are preparing plans for a second massive economic stimulus program that could total as much as 700 billion dollars over the next two years, The Washington Post reported Monday.

The newspaper said that if approved, the amount would be one of the biggest public spending programs aimed at propping up the economy since President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal.

New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine, an Obama adviser, and Harvard economist Lawrence Summers, whom Obama has chosen to lead his White House economic team, both raised the possibility of 700 billion dollars in new spending, the report said.

The Post pointed out that Obama adviser and former Clinton administration Labor secretary Robert Reich and Democratic Senator Charles Schumer had also called for spending of between 500 billion to 700 billion dollars to stimulate the economy.

In his weekly radio address Saturday, Obama announced that he had ordered his economic advisers to produce an economic recovery plan to create 2.5 million new jobs over the next two years.



Obama said he intended to put people back to work by rebuilding roads and bridges, modernizing schools, building wind farms, solar panels and fuel-efficient cars.

He also plans to develop alternative energy technologies that he says can free the United States from its dependence on foreign oil and keep the US economy competitive in the years ahead.