to fill it. politicosp politico.com saying the president wants a c.e.o. to replace larry summers. summers is the third member of the president s economic team to resign in recent weeks following peter orzag and kristina romer. a u.s. army major accused of murdering 13 people at fort hood, connecticut man accused of trying to blow up times square. the secretary of homeland security will detail how home grown terror is harder to detect and more likely to succeed. janet napolitano will testify how the internet may be helping to increase radicalization here in the u.s. president obama arrives at the united nations today. traffic alert. tomorrow, he addresses the general assembly pushing for tough new sanctions against iran and north korea. much of that speech is apparently going to be a response to yesterday s comments by that guy, iranian president mahmoud ahmadinejad. he promised a war without end for countries that interfere with iran s goal. that s good. the site of the p
that, you know, republicans are at fault for refusing to help him jump-start the economy. he wants g.o.p. support for his proposed tax breaks for businesses even as more and more democrat incumbents and candidates are criticizing the president s economic plan. of course, obama is feeling the heat with the midterms just weeks away and his poll numbers down, he wants to show that he s got a plan to fix the economy and get folks back to work. part of that plan includes a new position for one of his long-time economic advisors. the president will open his news conference today by announcing that austin goldsby will replace kristina romer as new chairman of the economic advisors. he was the obama campaign senior economic advisor. remember, obama campaigned on a promise not to raise taxes on the middle class. in his speech on wednesday and we ll hear more of that today, obama stressing he s keeping that promise to americans. his plan is a hard sell, though,
push on the economy today. we can expect mr. obama to hammer home the message that republicans should support his economic plans, specifically new tax breaks for businesses and the president also, as you know, wants to extend the bush tax cuts for the middle class only but not families making more than $250,000 a year. expect to hear that from him today. and before he takes questions today, the president will open with an announcement, naming the long time economic advisor as the new chairman of the white house council on economic advisors replacing christina romer. he s smart and funny and he s an economics professor at the university of chicago and last year, he won d.c. s funniest celebrity contest. who knew? more importantly, though, he was obama s top economic advisor during the campaign. his senate and white house campaigns and his appointment sends a message that obama is keeping steady on his economic plan with the midterms less than two months away and even with some democrats
in the last few weeks now to get another one. and they re looking at a whole range of proposals from tax reductions for research and development to potentially an infrastructure project, the large infrastructure project, other tax cuts. but they re not quite sure where they want to be because they don t want to be criticized for contributing to the the deficit. frankly, i m a little bit surprised because when the the president finished his speech about iraq, he was basically saying we re going out to the economy. there don t appear to be any clear cut solutions coming out of the white house. aren t the debates over the next few weeks leading up to the midterm elections going to be did the stimulus package work or didn t it? it s so difficult for economists to decide, did it or didn t it? i believe christina romer said if the first big stimulus package was going to be successful and it was successful, the unemployment rate would have been down in the
say no, we re not going for this in which case they can turn around and say the economy s problems are your fault. these are pure politics. in reading the press reports this morning, it seems they say we really want to spend money. we re not going to call it a stimulus. but we re not quite sure how we want to spend it. we re talking about tax credits maybe, but they re talking about when they re talking about infrastructure, we re talking about huge dollars that they re talking about. they re floating a lot of trial balloons. tax credits for research and development for business. maybe a payroll tax holiday where you don t get your social security deducted from your paycheck for a brief period of time. and maybe some other item like infrastructure spending. it s the trial balloons what will fly because the president has to hold this press conference next friday. he s going to be questioned about what he s going to do about the economy. so there s all kinds of ideas floated out th