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Earlier today I made mention of who Obama had chosen to head the Secretary of Education. That would be Arne Duncan.
After the press conference, President-elect Obama took a few questions.
QUESTION: The Federal Reserve is expected to lower the fed funds rate today to 50 basis points, one of the lowest rates in history.
OBAMA: Right.
QUESTION: I'm just wondering, how confident are you in Ben Bernanke's decision? And with that decision, are we running out of options to jump start the economy?
OBAMA: Well, I don't think it's good policy for the president or a president-elect to second-guess the Fed, which is an independent body. But let me just make an observation that we are running out of the traditional ammunition that's used in a recession, which is to lower interest rates. They're getting to be about as low as they can go. And although the Fed is still going to have more tools available to it, it is critical that the other branches of government step up. And that's why the economic recovery plan is so absolutely critical.
And my economic team, which I'm going to be meeting with today, is helping to shape what is going to be a bold agenda to create 2.5 million new jobs, to start helping states and local governments with shovel-ready projects -- rebuilding our roads, our bridges, making sure that schools like this one are energy efficient, putting people back to work, getting businesses to start seeing some increase in demand, so that we can get, instead of a downward spiral, start getting on an upward spiral.
And I'm confident that we can accomplish that if we've got Democrats and Republicans, federal, state, and local governments all working together. But, look, we are going through the toughest time, economically, since the Great Depression. And it's going to be -- it's going to be tough.
And we're going to have work through a lot of these difficulties, these structural difficulties that built up over many decades, some of it having to do with the financial industry and the huge amounts of leverage, the huge amounts of debt that were taken on, the speculation and the risk that was occurring, the lack of financial regulation; some of it having to do with our housing market, stabilizing that.
It's going to be, I think, critical for us to look at some of the long-term issues that I talked about during the campaign, health care and energy.QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) you had said before that you were going to appoint a number of Republicans to you Cabinet, and so far we haven't seen that many. Do you -- what can we expect in that area?
OBAMA: I'm not giving you a preview. We've got some more appointments to make. And I think that when you look at our entire White House staff and Cabinet and various appointments, I think people will feel that we followed through on our commitment to make sure that this is not only an administration that is diverse ethnically but it's also diverse politically and it's diverse in terms of people's life experience.
Arne's somebody who has really been working on the ground, for example. You know, he's not a creature of Washington. That's not where he cut his teeth. He cut his teeth working with kids individually, working in schools like this.
You know, we have other people, obviously, who have Washington experience, and I think that blend is going to make us extraordinarily effective on not just our education agenda but our broader agenda to help American families live out the American dream.
OK. Thank you guys.
I have a hard time trusting politicians in general, but Republicans especially. Bi-partisanship? Yes indeed, the same kind that they have shown the Democrats since Bush took office.
I wouldn't let a Republican politician near the White House, if I were the President, without him being shot. But that's just me.
