On Jan. 20, the United States inaugurates the administration of Barack Obama, the first black president in its history, in the midst of the most devastating global economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

His inauguration comes under unprecedented historic circumstances: He confronts the recession as the United States is fighting two wars?in Iraq and Afghanistan?with the economy in ?dire? shape.

In a landmark speech last week at George Mason University in Virginia on his return to Washington from his holiday in Hawaii, Obama said he and Congress needed to act quickly.

Outlining his plan for US economic recovery, he set the tone for what lies ahead. The incoming administration appeared to be spending all its early political capital showed by his 80-percent approval rating on economic policy at a time of two wars abroad.
?Throughout America?s history,? Obama said, ?there has been some years that simply rolled on next without notice or fanfare. Then there are years that come along once in a generation?the kind that marks a clean break from a troubled past, [and] set a new course of our nation. This is one of those years.?

He added: ?We start 2009 in the midst of a crisis unlike any we have seen in our lifetime, a crisis that has only deepened over the last few weeks.?

He cited grim statistics: new data from the US labor department was likely to show the United States has lost more jobs?over 2 million?than at any time since World War II.

?If nothing is done, this recession could linger for years,? Obama said. ?The unemployment could reach double digits. Our economy could fall $1 trillion short of its full capacity, which translates into more than $12,000 in lost income for a family of four.

?We could lose a generation of potential and promise, as more young Americans are forced to forgo dreams of college, of a chance to train for jobs of the future. And our nation could lose the competitive edge that has served as a foundation for our strength and standing in the world,? he said.

?In short, a bad situation could become dramatically worse.?

The presentation of gloomy statistics was intended to dampen high expectations of Obama performing an economic miracle to reverse the recession. But the economic data were also the basis of his economic stimulus plan he was expected to unfold on his inauguration.

In RP, no new initiatives

He was offering a program for a future for economic renewal with the cooperation of the Democratic-dominated Congress. He was talking of a road map to economic recovery for the future.

By contrast, on Jan. 19, the Philippine Congress will resume session after the Christmas break, saddled with a legislative agenda that does not offer new initiatives to reignite the economy and that is bogged down by unfinished business from 2008?the national budget for 2009 and the fate of the 20-year-old Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program.

The 2009 budget contains provisions for a fiscal stimulus package to pump-prime the economy with public works projects and job creation schemes to counter the fallout of the global financial crisis.

Congress is also distracted by administration-sponsored schemes to change the Constitution, ostensibly claimed to amend its economic restrictive provisions.

This legislative backlog, as well as the constitutional change movement, is not forward looking. Congress will be looking at the agenda through the reverse end of a telescope.

The Arroyo administration and Congress are not seeking any kind of economic and social renewal.

Rather, they are refocusing the national vision on what they seek to accomplish in the last 18 months of this dying and lame-duck administration with devious schemes to prolong its life beyond 2010 through constitutional change.

The legislative agenda of unfinished business is designed to promote this political end and not to respond to the pump-priming and job-creating projects outlined in the 2009 national budget to counter the recession.

US hope for revival

The mood of America as it approaches the inauguration of the Obama administration is full of hope and rhetoric of change.

The political vocabulary is replete with questions over whether the first hundred days of the Obama administration can generate an economic revival on the scale and with the boldness of Franklin D. Roosevelt?s New Deal program that set the United States on the track of economic recovery in 1933 following the Great Wall Street Crash of 1929.

Economists do not see in the outlines of Obama?s stimulus package program the boldness of Roosevelt?s New Deal.

In his radio address last week, Obama unveiled a program that appeared tame compared with the New Deal.

Obama said his two-year plan to boost the US economy would generate as many as 4 million jobs, higher than his previous estimates, the biggest portion of them in construction, manufacturing and retail.

The plan would also result in the US gross domestic product increasing by 3.7 percent more by the end of 2010 than it would without the stimulus, according a study by Obama?s academic adviser.

The study gives a forecast based on a package of spending and tax cuts totaling ?slightly over? the $775 billion that has been discussed by his transition team with members of Congress.

Potential nemesis

Obama has come up under the shadow and standards of the tradition of the 100 days started by Roosevelt.

?FDR stuck all his successors with the ridiculously unfair 100-day yardstick,? said Larry Sabato, professor of politics at University of Virginia.

?FDR inherited in 1933 an economy that by any measure was surely far worse than the one Obama faces now: an economy bereft after the go-go 1920s, where the sudden shift in the economic and consumer sentiment tide was marked by the 1929 Wall Street crash and then exacerbated by protectionist policy blunders that followed. FDR set about a dramatic legislative program in the first three months and the 100-day guidepost was born,? he said.

?In 1933, the entire American (and world) financial system had all but collapsed; 25 percent were out of work and revolution was in the air,? Sabato said. ?FDR was the ?last chance,? and he had enormous Democratic majorities in both houses.?

?Are the times tough now?? he was asked. ?Of course, but not even close to 1933.?

Obama cautioned against dramatic expectations.

?It will not come easy to happen overnight, and it is altogether likely that things may be worse before they get better,? he said.

Then he passed on the responsibility to Congress: ?But that is all the more reason for Congress to act without delay.?

The 100 days stand as the potential nemesis of the Obama bubble. Already criticism has appeared from both Democrats and Republicans in Congress who expressed doubt whether the tax cuts for individuals and businesses would be enough to boost the economy.