Opinion: Obama summons nation’s governors to Philadelphia to talk stimulus

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As part of his oft-promised commitment to change Washington, President-elect Barack Obama is going to Philadelphia.

And he’s gonna take most of the nation’s governors with him.

Where better for America’s first African American president to hold a kind of pre-inaugural economic summit than the city where he spoke about race, successfully defusing the lethal Rev. Jeremiah Wright bomb, and in the faded one-time national capital city where all those wigged white guys did all that political palavering on the hot days of the late 1700s to construct the written rules that we’re largely still living by today?

Think the TV networks might cover this Tuesday session live?

Atop the agenda: The economy, in the midst of a perfect storm of financial and manufacturing breakdowns that could dominate much of the new chief executive’s initial term.

Despite some grumbling about short notice, most of the nation’s governors will heed his call for the meeting to talk about the impact of the economic crisis on state budgets. An Obama transition....

...spokesman calls the conference, actually at Independence Hall, a chance to address ‘the unique challenges facing our states.’’

Pennsylvania has been a mixed bag for Obama. He had a generally well-received race speech there in which he refused to throw Wright under the bus until he did a few weeks later.

He had an embarrassing fundraiser tape-recording from San Francisco of Obama pre-primary denigrating smalltown (Pennsylvania) people as bitterly clinging to their guns and faith. He got a solid thrashing there from Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary (see photo).

And he won an electoral victory against the Republicans in Pennsylvania when it really mattered on Nov. 4.

Tuesday’s will be a bipartisan meeting, hosted by Pennsylvania Democrat Gov. Ed Rendell, an avid Hillary supporter who once provocatively wondered out loud if a lot of his state’s population would vote for a black man. The answer: Enough did.

Rendell is also current chairman of the nonpartisan National Governors Assn., and Vermont Republican Gov. Jim Douglas will be the meeting’s cochair. Douglas says some 40 governors or governors-elect plan to attend the hastily-assembled event.

Rendell has dedicated his NGA term to advocating spending on roads, bridges, seweage systems and mass transit.

What a nice fit; that’s just the sort of public works Obama hopes to have in a two-year economic stimulus plan to create 2.5 million new jobs by 2011.

Cost estimates range from $500 billion to $700 billion over two years, which is even more money than Obama raised from small campaign donors online. But no one’s talking about where these billions will come from.

Rendell says Obama wants opinions on shaping the stimulus package. And, let’s be honest, if the governors sent their package thoughts in by e-mail, there wouldn’t be any nifty video footage of the new president in an historic place taking charge already. And Obama’s reportedly had to give up his BlackBerry anyway.

The session will focus on what’s doable short-run, even though designing, approving, permitting, inspecting, fixing and actually building infrastructure projects is never a shortterm deal.

One safe prediction though: The governors will suggest their states get the money for work there.

Rendell really likes infrastructure jobs, which by definition can’t be outsourced to other countries. Coincidentally, this kind of government spending might be popular among union members. How about that?

Mark Silva, a crucial part of our blogging infrastructure, has more more detail on this story over at the Swamp.

--Andrew Malcolm

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