CAF In The News

politico.com — President Barack Obama plans a busy February. The new administration hopes to have a stimulus package passed by Congress, a new plan in place to shore up ailing banks and, by month’s end, to hold a “fiscal responsibility” summit.

If the stimulus and banking bailout weren’t controversial enough, the summit fills some entitlement reform critics with dread, as they fear it could speed calls for cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

google.com — President Barack Obama's massive plan aimed at lifting the US economy out of recession hit turbulence Wednesday, as grim news mounted from the corporate sector feeling the impact of the global crisis.

thenation.com — Looking back on the dawn of the Clinton administration in 1993, supporters of President Obama must surely feel gratified at their man's performance to date. They contrast the chaos of Clinton's liftoff with the disciplined tempo of the new crowd taking over the White House. They can savor the dispatch with which the forty-fourth president has pushed forward with the stimulus program and even tossed a few bouquets to the left--curtailment of official torture by the CIA, refreshing edicts on ethical guidelines and equal pay.

nationaljournal.com — As Obama settles into the Oval Office, he faces a public more skeptical and mistrustful of the federal government than at any other time since polls have been taken. Even amid the Watergate scandal and President Nixon's resignation in 1974, a far higher percentage of people said they trusted Washington than say that today.

nationaljournal.com — Even as the new president is hailed as an antidote to his failed predecessor, he can capitalize on his image for only so long. The public wants results. Obama must not waste a moment of his honeymoon.

salon.com — Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton said goodbye to the Senate Thursday, in the only ways either of them knew how. For Biden, that meant a rambling, sentimental farewell speech that included impressions of long-dead Senate legends, a hefty dose of soft-focus history and enough of his patented rhetorical tics that anyone listening could tell he wasn't using a prepared text. And for Clinton, right afterward, that meant a careful, on-message, bulleted list of her accomplishments all around New York state, ticking off the exact number of state fairs (eight), parades (45) and counties (62) she'd visited along the way.

beta.investors.com — Ever since Franklin D. Roosevelt, presidents have tried to get their administrations off to a good start by making their first 100 days in office a whirlwind of activity. Barack Obama is keeping up that tradition with an ambitious early agenda. He has a good chance of getting a lot of it done too. Obama takes office with high approval ratings, expanded Democratic majorities and a clear sense...

chicagotribune.com — President-elect Barack Obama delivered a major address Thursday on the collapsing economy that sounded more like a campaign speech than what the nation really needs: a specific, detailed plan for getting out of this mess.

Obama used only three hard numbers in his speech at George Mason University. And the only one related to policy—the promise of a $1,000 tax cut for 95 percent of working families—did not exactly have the sound of a big-picture plan to save the struggling economy.

Some details of Obama's plan have leaked out in recent days. The price tag could come to $775 billion, or could reach $1.2 trillion, depending on whose numbers and what programs one believes.

usatoday.com — Faced with the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression, President-elect Barack Obama already has assumed the burden of the presidency — and with it the opportunity to shape his legacy and make the economy go boom or bust.

cqpolitics.com — With the economy looking bleaker by the week, it has seemed as if Barack Obama might have to wait on some of the ambitious initiatives he proposed during his campaign, such as attacking global warming and pursuing national health insurance. The massive government spending the president-elect has prescribed for the recession, though, has given liberal and environmental activists hope that in stimulating the economy he might still carry out some of these projects.