Jan. 11 (Bloomberg) -- President-elect Barack Obama said reviving the U.S. economy will require scaling back on his campaign promises and personal sacrifice from all Americans.
“I want to be realistic here, not everything that we talked about during the campaign are we going to be able to do on the pace we had hoped,†Obama said in an interview on ABC’s “This Week†program broadcast this morning. “Everybody’s going to have to give.â€
Obama also said in the interview recorded yesterday that he wants stricter guidelines and greater transparency in spending the remaining $350 billion in the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
Obama takes office Jan. 20 and is pressing Congress to act quickly on a two-year economic stimulus plan of about $775 billion that includes new government spending and tax cuts. As part of his campaign to build support from lawmakers and the public, Obama has been speaking about the economy every day over the past week, warning of a deeper and more prolonged recession without government action.
Though some Democrats have resisted elements of Obama’s plan, recent economic data have helped him make his point. The Labor Department reported Jan. 9 that the U.S. lost almost 2.6 million jobs in 2008 and that the unemployment rate jumped to 7.2 percent in December, the highest level in almost 16 years. The losses were widespread, with manufacturers, builders, retailers and temporary-help agencies axing positions.
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