A post-stimulus Obama touts smaller economic fixes
Jun-17-2011

Lacking traditional federal tools to jolt the economy, President Barack Obama is turning to more modest measures that allow him to continue trumpeting the message that he is fighting to find jobs for the millions who are out of work.
Obama met with business experts and workers Monday amid a wave of ominous economic reports that could be the president's political undoing. The unemployment rate last week ticked up to 9.1 percent; the housing market sagged to 2002 levels; and first-quarter economic growth was an anemic 1.8 percent.
All this has created openings for GOP presidential hopefuls. Obama no longer looks quite so formidable. Mitt Romney, the front- runner, was deadlocked with Obama in a recent poll, having made the economy the thrust of his campaign.
Obama traveled to North Carolina to lead a roundtable discussion with the high- profile corporate leaders who make up his jobs council, holding the meeting in an important swing state where the jobless rate is close to 10 percent. It was his fifth trip to the state as president.
But implicit in the meeting Monday was the sense that Washington can neither afford large-scale spending programs nor win the political consensus necessary to fund them.
Sitting next to General Electric chief Jeffrey Immelt at a horseshoe-shaped table, Obama kicked around recommendations that his administration can put in place without approval of a polarized Congress: a streamlined permitting procedure, quicker.

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