White House Debates Ideas on Jobs, Economy

Posted by: Jane Sasseen on November 02

It’s a busy, busy day at the White House on the economic front. With sky-high joblessness still a big economic and political problem, the President and his economic advisors will spend a big chunk of the day trying to come up with more effective solutions.

First, the president is meeting for the board of outside advisors — known as the the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board (PERAB) — he named soon after taking office. This will be the second meeting of the PERAB, whose outside members include GE CEO Jeff Immelt, AFL-CIO head Richard Trumka and Robert Wolf, the head of UBS Group America. Former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker heads the group; a full list of attendees is below.

According to the White House, the idea is to discuss “long-term, innovation based ideas to sustain growth and continue to create jobs of the future.” The meeting, which will take place in the Roosevelt Room, starts at 11:10 and is being streamed on www.whitehouse.gov/live.

And that’s just a start. In the afternoon, starting at 2 PM, the President’s full economic team will be attemding a meeting of the National Economic Council led by NEC head Larry Summers. They, too, will be mulling over the state of the economy and debating Administration efforts to create new jobs and put the country on the path to sustainable, long-term growth.

Both meetings have an all star roster. Summers’s NEC meeting will include Domestic Policy advisor Melody Barnes, Office of Energy and Climate Change Director Carol Browner, Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan, Export-Important Bank Chairman Fred Hochberg, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett, NSC Director James Jones, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk, Chief of Staff to the Vice President Ron Klain, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, SBA Administrator Karen Mills, OMB Director Peter Orszag, Interior Secretary Ken Salazer, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

The PERAB meeting, chaired by Volcker, features a host of prominent insiders and outsiders as well. Board members include Anna Burger, Chair, Change to Win; John Doerr, Partner, Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers; William H. Donaldson, Former Chairman, SEC; Roger W. Ferguson, Jr., President & CEO, TIAA-CREF; Mark T. Gallogly, Founder & Managing Partner, Centerbridge Partners L.P.; Timothy Geithner, Secretary of the Treasury; Austan Goolsbee, Staff Director and Chief Economist; Jeff Immelt, Chairman & CEO, GE; Monica C. Lozano, Publisher & Chief Executive Officer, La Opinion; Charles E. Phillips, Jr., President, Oracle Corporation; Penny Pritzker, Chairman & Founder, Pritzker Realty Group; Larry Summers, Director of the National Economic Council; David F. Swensen, Chief Investment Officer, Yale University; Richard L. Trumka, President, AFL-CIO; Paul Volcker, Chairman; Robert Wolf, Chairman & CEO, UBS Group Americas. There are a few other administration attendees as well, including David Axelrod, Special Advisor to the President; Carol Browner, Office of Energy and Climate Change Director; Rahm Emanuel, Chief of Staff; Valerie Jarrett, Senior Advisor to the President and Director of Inter-governmental Affairs