Obama not ruling out second stimulus

Shortly after Robert Nabors, deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, said yesterday that “no one in the administration is talking about a second stimulus at this point,” the administration signaled that the president would be open to one if job loss continues.

Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, said Obama is “not ruling anything out” and that the “bottom line” is “if there are steps that he thinks, and his team thinks need to be taken to improve our economy, we won’t hesitate to do that.”

Reporters asked about the stimulus because on Tuesday Laura D’Andrea Tyson, an economist who advised Obama during the 2008 campaign and is a member of his economic advisory panel, said the country should be planning for a possible second round of stimulus focused on infrastructure.

Nabors spoke to the press when he finished testifying at a congressional hearing on oversight of the first $787 billion stimulus package He said Tyson did not represent the White House. “She is an outside economic adviser. She does not work for the administration.”

Labor and its allies hailed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, signed into law by Obama in February, as key to creating and saving at least 3 million jobs during this, the longest and deepest recession since the Great Depression.

With the recession continuing and with a June job loss figure of 467,000 that pushed the unemployment rate to 9.5 percent, calls are growing for a second stimulus package. The labor movement, economists and lawmakers are among those calling for the new measure.

Supporters of a second stimulus argue that while the first one is doing what it was intended to do, it was put into effect when no one had yet realized the full extent of the economic crisis. Many economists now argue that the jobs gap that has to be closed is in the neighborhood of 8 million, rather than the 3 million figure discussed back in January.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer is saying Congress and the president should be open to a second stimulus.