US$ 700 billion plan to rescue US unveiled
27 November 2008
US President-elect Barack Obama has unveiled a US$ 700 billion construction plan for the nation's infrastructure, education and energy sectors.
The plan aims to create 2.5 million jobs by 2011, and is the biggest public works programme since then President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal, which helped pull the US economy out of the Great Depression in the 1930s.
Unveiling his plan at a press conference yesterday, Mr Obama said work on resurrecting the US economy would begin immediately because "we do not have a minute to waste".
Mr Obama added the US economy was caught in a "vicious cycle" and faced a "crisis of historic proportions".
Mr Obama said his US$ 700 billion spending plan would "not only deal with the immediate crisis but lay the groundwork for long-term sustained economic growth".
The US£ 700 million is in adition to the bail-out of the same amount agreed by the US Congress in October. Added to the funds being made available to help ailing US financial institutions, spending on rescuing the US economy could approach US$ 2 trillion.
