Barack Obama's rescue plan is getting bigger: The president-elect now hopes to create or preserve three million jobs, up from the 2.5 million he named months ago. The increase comes after a meeting in which Obama's advisers told him that the economy could lose up to 3.5 million jobs and unemployment could exceed 9 percent in 2009. Economists are calling on the government to spend $800 billion to $1.3 trillion on stimulus, but an Obama adviser tells The Washington Post that the president-elect has settled on $775 billion as the highest figure likely to win congressional approval, which would still be, according to some calculations, the most expensive measure ever passed by Congress. According to Obama's top economic adviser, Larry Summers, the transition team is "scrubbing" proposals now for "basic soundness," and is trying to address concerns that the measure will be a grab bag for Democratic interest groups.
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