Obama warns economy will get worse

President-elect Obama said Sunday that the nation’s faltering economy will get worse before it gets better, but he is optimistic that his economic rescue plan can create jobs quickly.

Obama, in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press”, that his “number one priority coming in” will be passing an economic recovery package with a heavy focus on infrastructure building that “that is equal to the task.”

{mosads}”But things are gonna get worse before they get better,” Obama said.

In his weekly radio address on Saturday, Obama announced a New Deal-like program that he said will create 2.5 million jobs “while rebuilding our infrastructure, improving our schools, reducing our dependence on oil and saving billions of dollars.”

The plan will include a “large-scale effort” to make public buildings more energy efficient, rebuilding and modernizing schools, updating and ensuring access to electronic medical records, developing widespread broadband networks and making “the single largest new investment in our national infrastructure since President Eisenhower established the Interstate Highway System in the 1950s.”

On Sunday, Obama declined to offer specifics on how much his plan will cost when pressed by moderator Tom Brokaw, and he continued to soften on some of his campaign promises like rolling back President Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

Obama’s advisers have signaled recently that the president-elect might opt to let the tax cuts expire on their own in 2011 instead of pushing for their repeal immediately. Obama did the same Sunday when he said his economic team is exploring a number of options, but “we don’t yet know what the best approach is going to be.”

Obama also wavered on his late campaign promise to impose a three-month moratorium on home foreclosures, but he did say that he is still considering such a move and that it “remains an important tool, an important option.”

Obama said the Bush administration has not done enough to address the growing number of home foreclosures, and he and his staff have expressed that to administration officials.

“I’m disappointed that we haven’t seen quicker movement on this issue by the administration,” he said.

In the wide-ranging interview, taped Saturday in Chicago, Obama spoke of the need to shift focus from Iraq to Afghanistan, and he said that despite a new agreement between the U.S. and Iraqi governments that would require U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq by the end of 2011, one of his “first acts” will be to convene the joint chiefs of staff and his national security team to “design a plan for a responsible drawdown.”

The president-elect also announced his nomination of Gen. Eric Shinseki to head the department of veterans affairs. Shinseki was dismissed by the Bush administration after he broke with former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld over the need for more more troops in Iraq.