Weekend: back to the economy
Updated on 08 December 2008
Weekend, Fri 5-Sun 7 Dec 2008: how to buck the unemployment trend and support returning troops.
After the latest unemployment figures were released in the US, the Obama team turned their attention back to the economy this weekend.
Barack Obama's weekly address on the transition team website change.gov illuminated some sections of the economic recovery play announced two weeks ago.
Highlights included making public building more energy-efficient, creating more jobs (which was included in the original announcement) and measures to "modernize and upgrade" school buildings.
"We won't do it the old Washington way," he said. "We won't just throw money at the problem. We'll measure progress by the reforms we make and the results we achieve - by the jobs we create, by the energy we save, by whether America is more competitive in the world."
Obama also used an interview with msnbc's "Meet the Press" on Sunday to focus on the economy, saying the situation is "going to get worse" before it gets better and adding that a short-term economic stimulus package would be his "number one priority" when he moves into the White House.
He was not the only politician on the media circuit. Condoleezza Rice took the opportunity to tell abc News "This week" programme that her successor, Hillary Clinton, would be "terrific".
"She also has what's most important to be Secretary of State," Condi said. "That is that you love this country and you represent it from the basic of faith in its values, and I know that she will do that."
Sunday was a busy day for the transition team. Along with appearing on msnbc, Obama also announcing yet another appointment - this time General Eric Shinseki as US secretary of veterans affairs.
He made the announcement on the anniversary of the Pearl Harbour attacks in 1941, saying General Shinseki is "exactly the right person who is going to be able to make sure that we honor our troops when they come home".
Shinseki was a high profile critic of Bush administration's handling of the war in Iraq. He angered the then defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld by telling Congress that several hundred thousand US troops would be needed in Iraq after the invasion in February 2003.
Three years later the chief of US central command and architect of the military strategy in Iraq told the same committee he was right and Bush sent thousands of troops back to Iraq in 2007.
