By Pamela Gentry, Senior Political Producer

 Nov. 24, 2008 – Today, when President-elect Barack Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden announce their hand-picked economic team, the next hurdle will be explaining how they will accomplish Obama’s plan to add 2.5 million jobs to the workforce.

Where will these jobs come from and how will he do it?  Obama is proposing a two-year initiative to put Americans to work here at home rebuilding the nation’s crumbling infrastructure.  It’s work that needs to be done, and his plan isn’t a “new” idea, but it could be the largest proposed spending program since President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal.  (Estimates have been as high as $500 billion) But can a stimulus of this nature work in today’s employment environment?

That will be one of the first challenges facing his newly appointed economic team.

During the president-elect’s weekly radio address, he said he’s already instructed the  team that jobs are a priority. “We’ll put people back to work rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges, modernizing schools that are failing our children, and building wind farms and solar panels; fuel-efficient cars and the alternative energy technologies that can free us from our dependence on foreign oil and keep our economy competitive in the years ahead.”

The folks Obama plans to announce later today, along with Timothy Geithner, who’s been tapped to fill the top job as Treasury secretary, will be charged with making all this happen.  But two important questions will remain once the team is put in place:  How much will it cost to create 2.5 million new jobs and how will the task be accomplished?
I doubt either question will have easy answers.

Do you think jobs should be the first issue on the new president’s agenda?