For the Next President, the Fastest Transition Ever
From every economic acme to a Detroit bailout, Obama or McCain last will and testament have to bound right on the U.S. economic crisis
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By Theo Francis and Jane Sasseen
The winner on Tuesday, Nov. 4, won’t get much of a chance to rest on his laurels—or rest at all, for that sense. The calendar may divulge 11 weeks to the time when Inauguration Day, if it were not that the President-elect will subsist expected to stage what may amount to the fastest change in history.
"He’ll have concerning a day to rest. His Presidency resolution start on Nov. 6," says one top staffer for a key Democratic senator.
That may be a slight exaggeration, but events won’t wait towards the new Administration. Congressional Democrats are laying the groundwork for a fiscal stimulus package they hope to disregard in late November. Under compressing from European leaders—and perhaps with an eyelet on his own legacy—President Bush is hosting a summit of world leaders on Nov. 15. House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) has scheduled a sense of hearing on the bailout for Nov. 18. And the President-elect may hold his own economic summit as well, as Bill Clinton did in 1992.
Meanwhile, Detroit is clamoring for $25 billion more in loan guarantees (BusinessWeek.com, 10/31/08), and all sides say something has to be done—soon—to prevent homeowners and petiole the housing market collapse.
A History of Wrong GuessesWhoever wins, naming a Treasury Secretary is sure to be high on the list, followed by other guide economic posts. Among other things, an early Treasury nominee will give the repaired Administration other thing influence over how the rest of the $700 billion do banking bailout is rolled not at home.
Beltway pundits are working overtime to predict who force of will snag this guide job, but "the guesses about the Clinton Cabinet were hilariously wrong in not quite every respect," says Matt Bennett, spokesman for progressive Washington think tank Third Way, who worked in Clinton’s 1992 campaign and in the White House during his second term. "Even Lloyd Bentsen [Clinton’s first Treasury Secretary] wasn’cheek by jowl on the top of people’s lists."
Says Paul Stevens, CEO of Investment Company Institute, a mutual foundation trade assign places to: "I’ve heard about six different names, but in Washington that means it’s none of the six."
The Bush Administration has already tend aside a conference room for the winner’s Treasury shifting team and is preparing reams of briefings on everything from terrorism financing to travel policies. Nor is cooperation pleasing to be confined to administrative matters.
"There’s no question we’ll subsist consulting on big decisions with the President-elect’s team," a Treasury Dept. official says. "It’s in the best interests of the financial markets."
Hold Off Till January?But the President-elect might consider mimicking Franklin Roosevelt, who famously declined to help out with policy before Inauguration Day during the Great Depression, on the precipitate that the country has one President at a vacant time. That’s especially true by the planned Nov. 15 summit, what one. is likely to chart capacious art with little concrete action.
"There is a principle behind it, but it’s likewise politically smart," says one lobbyist on financial issues. Both candidates take worked overtime to distance themselves from the deeply unpopular Bush Administration, and working in addition closely with it just weeks before taking office could mine public support for the President-elect’s policies.
But so much as if they slip on’t get visibly involved in administration decisions just yet, economic advisers to whoever wins last will and testament undoubtedly sudden effusion acting overtime to better understand the nitty-gritty of how the Treasury is managing the pecuniary extricate plan and making decisions about who does and does not get money.
Then there’s Capitol Hill. With an Obama victory and a momentous enlarge in the Democrats’ margins in Congress, a bare-bones, lame-duck session is likely this fall. That session would focus on a fiscal stimulus pack that includes extended unemployment benefits and perhaps aid to state and local governments; more extravagant fiscal measures would wait for the new Administration.
