President-elect Obama's call for a stimulus package that would create or save 2.5 million American jobs provides an early opportunity for him to make good on promises to increase employment in environmentally friendly businesses.

The creation of so-called "green-collar" jobs was a popular theme during the presidential campaign, because it had the twofold virtue of weaning America from its dependence on fossil fuels while expanding payrolls in construction and other segments of the economy.

At various points in the campaign, Obama, his Republican opponent, John McCain, and his Democratic primary foe, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, each conjured visions of Great Society era workers hammering solar panels on to roofs and erecting wind farms.

Of course, that was before the full magnitude of the financial crisis became apparent.

President-elect Barack Obama's transition team just put out its announcement on the people he has tapped to shape his administration's economic policy. No surprises, but here they are:

Timothy F. Geithner, Secretary of the Treasury

Geithner currently serves as president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where he has played a key role in formulating the nation's monetary policy. He joined the Department of the Treasury in 1988 and has served three presidents. From 1999 to 2001, he served as Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs. Following that post he served as director of the Policy Development and Review Department at the International Monetary Fund until 2003. Geithner is a graduate of Dartmouth College and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

Lawrence H. Summers, Director of the National Economic Council

Summers is currently the Charles W. Eliot University Professor at Harvard University. Summers served as 71st Secretary of the Treasury from 1999 to 2001 and as president of Harvard from 2001 to 2006. Before being appointed Secretary, Summers served as Deputy and Under Secretary of the Treasury and as the World Bank's top economist. Summers has taught economics at Harvard and MIT, and is a recipient of the John Bates Clark Medal, awarded to the American economist under 40 judged to have made the most significant contribution to economics. Summers played a key advisory role during the 2008 presidential campaign.

Christina D. Romer, Director of the Council of Economic Advisors

Romer is the Class of 1957 Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley, where she has taught and researched since 1988. Prior to joining the faculty at Berkeley, Romer was an assistant professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Romer is co-director of the Program in Monetary Economics at the National Bureau of Economic Research and has been a visiting scholar at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

Melody C. Barnes, Director of the Domestic Policy Council

Barnes is co-director of the Agency Review Working Group for the Obama-Biden Transition Team, and served as the Senior Domestic Policy Advisor to Obama for America. Barnes previously served as Executive Vice President for Policy at the Center for American Progress and as chief counsel to Senator Edward M. Kennedy on the Senate Judiciary Committee from December 1995 until March 2003.

Heather A. Higginbottom, Deputy Director of the Domestic Policy Council

Higginbottom served as Policy Director for Obama for America, overseeing all aspects of policy development. From 1999 to 2007, Higginbottom served as Senator John Kerry's Legislative Director. She also served as the Deputy National Policy Director for the Kerry-Edwards Presidential Campaign for the primary and general elections. After the 2004 election, Higginbottom founded and served as Executive Director of the American Security Project, a national security think tank. She started her career as an advocate at the national non-profit organization Communities in Schools.

Perhaps the most-asked Sunday morning question on the talk shows was just how much money President-elect Barack Obama had in mind in proposing his two year plan to create 2.5 million jobs, as well as how big congressional Democrats were thinking when it came to their plans for an economic stimulus package.

It was also the most-ducked question.

The closest anyone from Obama's team came to giving an answer was Austan Goolsbee, a University of Chicago economist, who has been advising Obama.

Goolsbee at least gave a starting point on CBS' "Face the Nation:" "It has to be big. In the campaign, he (Obama) was looking at stimulus that was in the $175 billion range, and the economy has gotten substantially worse since then."

While President-Elect Obama's cabinet is starting to take shape with several big names reportedly slotted for top jobs, Obama has also been filling out the list of people who will be on his White House staff. Here's a round-up:

Having named Timothy Geithner as his Treasury Secretary, The Wall Street Journal says that Lawrence Summers, who was Treasury Secretary towards the end of the Clinton administration, will be director of Obama's National Economic Council. Summers had been on the short list for Treasury Secretary and was a mentor of Geithner.

The Obama transition team announced:

Robert Gibbs will be the White House press secretary. Gibbs had been communications director for Obama's Senate race and held the same job in Obama's Senate office.

Ellen Moran will be Director of Communications. She comes from Emily's List where she oversaw the national staff and charts the overall strategic direction of the organization, which is dedicated to electing women to office.

Dan Pfeiffer will be Deputy Director of Communications. He began on Obama's presidential campaign in January 2007 as the traveling press secretary before returning to Chicago to manage the transition press operation as Communications Director.

While an announcement will not come before Thanksgiving, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton appears all but certain to be President-Elect Barack Obama's Secretary of State.

An Obama aide says issues surrounding the financial disclosures of former President Bill Clinton have been resolved.

"Things are on track," the aide said. "There will be no formal announcement before Thanksgiving."

A statement from Clinton's office said, "We're still in discussions, which are very much on track. Any reports beyond that are premature."

The New York Times had reported Wednesday that one potential obstacle to choosing Hillary Clinton had been overcome when Bill Clinton agreed to conditions sought by Obama's transition team to eliminate potential conflicts of interest.

The other question that had hung over whether Clinton would accept an offer was whether she wanted to give up the independence she enjoyed as a senator and continuing a career in the Senate where she might move into a leadership role.

Obama also appears poised to name New York Federal Reserve Bank President Timothy J. Geithner as his Treasury Secretary, according to reports in the Wall Street Journal and NBC News.

CQ's Benton Ives reports that Geithner could face tough questions in confirmation hearings about his role in devising a financial rescue plan that has become increasingly unpopular with lawmakers.

NBC said Obama would announce his economic team next week as "part of an effort to reassure markets."

The network also said that New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson was in line to become Commerce Secretary.

--Jonathan Allen

Given that Barack Obama (class of '91) is now one of Harvard Law School's best known alumni, it's not surprising the Harvard Law Record, an independent student run weekly paper, would have a special "presidential transition" section and a feature article this week about what law school grads Obama might tap for cabinet and subcabinet posts. The law school can already boast that Ronald Klain (class of '87) has been chosen as Vice President-Elect Joseph Biden's chief of staff.

The article sniffed that "Columbia alum Eric Holder likely had a lock on the Attorney General slot" but it wasn't about to say "Congrats, Eric."

"Harvard contenders can breathe a sigh of relief, however - the vetting process on Holder isn't complete yet, let alone the confirmation hearings that will have to be held in the Senate," it said. "Controversy still surrounds Holder's work to pardon of Mark Rich when he served as Acting Attorney General in the waning days of the Clinton administration."

For Treasury, the Law Record surmised that former Treasury Secretary Richard Rubin might be a longshot to take that post again (although Rubin has said he's not interested). But that wouldn't be much of a trophy for the school since Rubin "attended HLS for a grand total of three days before leaving 'to see the world.'"

Memories of former President Bill Clinton's rough-going in his first two years of office, despite the fact his party had control of Congress, are still fresh in the minds of many Democrats - particularly House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer.

Asked today at the National Press Club whether he was confident that Obama and the Democrats had learned the lessons of those first Clinton years, Hoyer said, "There is a difference in '09 and '10 than '93 and '94. And the difference was 12 years in the wilderness" after the Republicans took back the House in 1994.

Said Hoyer: "We had been in the majority for 38 years in '93 and '94. And there was a sense that we would perhaps always be in the majority. And, therefore, I think we did not focus enough on reaching consensus, not only within the Congress, but also between the president and the Congress."

Hoyer said that there were enough Clintonites working for Obama and enough Democrats who were in Congress way back then not to forget that.

There may be only one president at a time, but that hasn’t stopped President-elect Barack Obama from giving pointers to President Bush’s Treasury Secretary, Henry M. Paulson, on executing a $700 billion rescue package for the American economy.

“We’ve assigned somebody on my transition team who interacts with him on a daily basis,” Obama said in an interview on CBS’ 60 Minutes broadcast on Sunday. “We’re making suggestions in some circumstances about how we think they might approach some of these problems.”

Obama did not expand on what kinds of suggestions were being made.

He was also reticent about the makeup of his Cabinet. He said at least one member of the set of top department and agency heads would be a Republican but declined to say whether onetime primary competitor Hillary Rodham Clinton would be among them.

Clinton has been rumored to be in the running to become Obama’s secretary of State since reports surfaced that the two met in Chicago last week.

“She is somebody who I needed advice and counsel from She is one of the most thoughtful public officials that we have,” is all Obama would say.

Asked whether he would construct a Cabinet like the group of Abraham Lincoln advisers that biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin called a “Team of Rivals,” Obama said of Lincoln, “I find him a very wise man.”

When will he start announcing his Cabinet? “Soon.”

— Jonathan Allen

Valerie Jarrett, co-chair of Barack Obama’s transition team, cleared up one small mystery last night during an interview on PBS’ “The News Hour” — namely why the detailed issues pages on the Obama transition site had been pulled down and replaced with a more general statement about his agenda.

“We’re in the process now of doing agency review,” Jarrett told Judy Woodruff. “Now that we have a lot more information that’s coming from working cooperatively with the team that’s in the Bush administration right now, we’re taking a look at all of the commitments that were made in the course of the campaign. We’re looking at the information that we’re gathering from the agencies so it will add some color and some depth to our analysis. And then, as we make decisions, we’ll be putting that back up on the Web page.”

Jarrett repeated Obama’s promise of transparency in his administration and said “the web page will provide a wonderful keyhole into the administration on a regular basis.”

And on another note, she dismissed speculation about being appointed to Obama’s Senate seat.

“Well, you know what?” she said, when asked about it. “I’m actually not interested in the Senate position.”

How would Democrats react if Barack Obama gave two top-tier cabinet posts — secretary of State and secretary of Defense — to two Republicans who have been mentioned for them, Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar and current Defense Secretary Robert Gates, respectively?

Here’s one answer from California Rep. Jane Harman, chairperson of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Intelligence: “I know both men quite well and think the world of both of them,” she told Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC today. “And I do think this will be a bipartisan cabinet. The strongest presidents in our history, like Lincoln and Roosevelt and Kennedy, have built bipartisan cabinets. And I think that is a way to send a wonderful signal to Congress, which has been viewed as an inconvenience on a bipartisan basis to this administration, that we are partners again and that the toxic partisanship of these last eight years is over.”

Asked if she might take a top intelligence job in the Obama administration, Harman ducked.

“I’m not going to speculate,” she said. “I’ve just been re-elected to my eighth term, and I enjoy my work in Congress.”

Want to know who’s in the top tier of the next president’s inner circle? Check their tags.

They already have security clearances. More than 100 potential nominees for positions in an Obama government have already received interim security clearances under an executive order and 2004 law that allows early vetting of those in line for critical jobs.

“That is a process that began well before the election,” transition co-chairman John Podesta said Tuesday. The transition team wants to avoid nominees getting “bogged down” in clearances, and hopes that the FBI will dedicate significant resources to the job and the Senate will provide a smooth confirmation process, Podesta said. “President-Elect Obama wants to make sure that we hit the ground running on Jan. 20, because we don’t have a moment to lose,” he said.

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, who served in the Clinton administration, says one challenge that President-elect Barack Obama faces is raised expectations among the public when it comes to how quickly he can show results in tackling the nation’s economic crisis.

Reich noted, in an interview on MSNBC, that Obama not only has been convening meetings of his own economic experts but had “been talking to (Treasury Secretary) Hank Paulson almost daily right until the election.”

“He is prepared,” Reich said. “Again, there are a lot of decisions that are going to have to be made. I’m concerned a little bit, as I’m sure he is, about expectations being so high … that he is going to have to manage them. Nothing can change overnight. He is also going to have to mobilize the public to make sure that they are pushing Congress and pushing him to get what needs to be done, done.”

If Barack Obama was measured and careful in his first press conference, he may have been outdone by Rahm Emanuel in his chief of staff debut on the Sunday morning talk shows.

Emanuel, who often revels in his reputation as a brass-knuckled partisan, morphed into a model of political diplomacy, turning in what they like to call in Washington an "on message" performance on ABC's "This Week" and CBS' "Face the Nation."

Asked about his reputation by George Stephanopoulos, Emanuel said, "President Obama is very clear, as you look at his career, both in the state senate, U.S. Senate, and the campaign that we have to govern in a bipartisan fashion...So that is the tone. That is the policy. And that is exactly how we're going to go forward. And he has said it for us."

Emanuel stuck to his talking points on both shows, particularly on the issue of the federal government coming to the aid of the auto industry by accelerating the $25 billion approved by the President and Congress to help it re-tool and using other existing authorities available to the administration to help.

He ducked questions such as whether Sen. Joseph Lieberman should be stripped of his chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee for his support during the campaign of John McCain ("What happens on the House and Senate, on chairmanship is their business"); whether Valerie Jarrett, a confidante of Obama and co-chair of his transition team, might be appointed to Obama's Senate seat ("She is a very dear friend of the president-elect..."); and deflecting a question on whether Obama might make some announcements before December on the make-up of his economic team, ("Well, as the chief of staff, I'm not going to get in front of the president, Bob.")

After Emanuel left, Bob (as in Schieffer) turned to his panelists, David Brooks of the New York Times and John Harris of Politico, and said, "Well, gentlemen, I have to preface this by saying I don't think we found out a lot this morning from Rahm Emanuel."

Said Brooks: "Suddenly the new coy Rahm Emanuel . You know, next thing he'll be Mr. Peaceful."