US president-elect Barack Obama, keeping his focus on the teetering US economy, outlined a plan to create 2.5 million jobs as transition officials said he would name a respected Federal Reserve official to the post of treasury secretary.
Today, Obama will name Timothy Geithner as treasury secretary and Lawrence Summers to direct the National Economic Council, transition officials said on Saturday. The announcement of the economic team and Obama’s promotion of the jobs plan comes as the economy continues its downward spiral, as multibillion dollar efforts to stabilize the economy fail to stem the tide.
If confirmed by the Senate, Geithner, 47, president of the New York Federal Reserve, would be the top Cabinet official in charge of leading the administration’s response to the economic crisis.
Word of his likely selection on Friday helped send the Dow Jones Industrials soaring 500 points after several days of steep losses.
Obama will also name Summers, a treasury secretary under former US president Bill Clinton and the former president of Harvard University, to coordinate the federal response to the economic meltdown across several agencies, transition officials said.
Officials said that Geithner and Summers would appear with Obama at a press conference in Chicago this morning.
As director of the National Economic Council, Summers would help shepherd Obama’s new recovery plan, which aims to create millions of new jobs rebuilding roads, modernizing schools and creating alternative energy sources by January 2011.
“These aren’t just steps to pull ourselves out of this immediate crisis. These are the long-term investments in our economic future that have been ignored for far too long,” Obama said in the weekly Democratic radio address.
Also on Saturday, Obama named longtime spokesman Robert Gibbs as White House press secretary.
Obama’s new director of communications will be Ellen Moran, who is executive director of the Washington women’s political group EMILY’s List.
Obama is virtually certain to offer Congressional Budget Office chief Peter Orszag the job of directing the White House Office of Budget and Management and Orszag is likely to accept, Democratic officials said on Saturday.
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