By Curt Nickisch (WBUR Business & Technology Reporter)

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Standing before an array of solar panels at a Nevada Air Force base on Wednesday, President Obama praised the role he says the economic stimulus will play in developing alternative energies.

“The nation that leads the world in creating new sources of clean energy will be the nation that leads the 21st-century global economy,” Obama said. “That’s the nation I want America to be and that’s the nation you want America to be.”

The stimulus package includes $70 billion for energy-related programs. Some of that will go to the Commonwealth and local governments here. But Massachusetts’ growing green-energy sector is also looking to get some of the dollars earmarked for other states.

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This week on The Bottom Line podcast: As the economic stimulus package meanders through Congress, President Obama warns us the crisis could become irreversible if lawmakers don’t act now.

…Really? Co-hosts Curt Nickisch and Andrew Phelps pick apart this week’s Bottom Line Buzzword, uttered by POTUS himself: Catastrophe.

Car Talk's Ray Magliozzi, left, and his brother, Tom, in 2008. (AP)

Plus, we nominate Car Talk’s Ray Magliozzi for car czar. He’s happy with his day job at the Good News Garage, thank you very much, but he returns to the show with some advice for the next car czar: “I don’t think any stimulus or any overnight answer is going to suffice here. I think they’re going to have to start innovating.” Ray suggests the government partner with the Big 3 to build a nationwide high-speed rail network. And he renews his call for a 50-cent national gas tax.

Also on the show: If your colleagues lose their jobs but you get to keep yours, how do you feel? A workplace psychologist says a lot of people suffer survivor’s guilt at the office.

And we check in again on Dancing Deer Baking Company, a Boston cookie shop that just laid of 10 people after years of growth. There is definitely some survivor’s guilt going on there. (You can catch the whole series over here.)

Get the week’s economy news — with a Boston accent — on The Bottom Line from WBUR.

BOSTON (AP) — The Senate version of an $838 billion economic stimulus bill includes money for high-speed rail projects that could help jumpstart Gov. Deval Patrick’s proposed $1.4 billion commuter rail link to New Bedford and Fall River.

Sen. John Kerry said he pushed to include $2 billion for investments in high-speed rail projects in the Senate version of the bill — money that could aid construction of the New Bedford project.

Kerry said the Senate version would deliver less education aid to Massachusetts — about $700 million compared with about $1.2 billion under the House version. Kerry said he opposed the lower Senate number.

The two versions head to a conference committee where a final version of the bill will be hammered out.

By Liz Halloran (NPR)

President Obama used his first White House news conference Monday night to personalize the dire state of the nation’s economy, leveraging his popularity and the power of his office to urge Congress and the country to get behind his stimulus package. (news conference transcript)

President Obama walks down the Cross Hall to hold his first news conference, Monday, Feb. 9, 2009, in the East Room of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Ron Edmonds)

Despite his effort to get bipartisan support for his huge economic plan, the rewards have been meager: zero Republican votes in the House and three in the Senate. But Obama pledged to continue to try to “build up some trust over time.”

“We find ourselves in a rare moment where the citizens of our country and all countries are watching and waiting for us to lead,” Obama said during his prime-time appearance. “It is a responsibility that this generation did not ask for, but one that we must accept for the sake of our future and our children’s.”

In his hourlong televised appearance, the president touched on a range of issues, from the war in Afghanistan to steroid use in Major League Baseball. But the bulk of his time was spent laying out the nation’s economic challenges and his legislative prescription.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama says he’s had a “wonderful exchange of ideas” with House Republicans about the stimulus plan he wants Congress to approve.

He met with GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill on Tuesday shortly after House GOP leaders tried to rally opposition to the stimulus measure backed by the White House.

After meeting with Republicans, and before heading to the Senate to meet with Republicans there, Obama said he’s still optimistic about the ability to get the package done. He says he knows there won’t be “100 percent support,” but that he’s going to “continue to welcome good ideas” from Republicans.

House Minority Leader John Boehner says Republicans look forward to continuing to work with Obama to improve the package. He and other Republican leaders say they believe Obama is ready to hear their ideas.

House GOP Whip Eric Cantor says the bill contains a lot of spending that “has no place” in a stimulus measure that should be focused on job creation.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Working closely with President-elect Barack Obama, House Democrats on Thursday called for $825 billion in federal spending and tax cuts to revive the moribund economy, with strong emphasis on energy, education, health care and jobs-producing highway construction.

The legislation calls for federal spending of roughly $550 billion and tax cuts of $275 billion over the next two years – totals all but certain to rise as it makes its way through Congress.

“Immediate job creation and continuing job creation” are the twin goals, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said at a news conference. Joblessness has risen sharply in recent months, and Obama has warned it could reach double digits unless action is taken to invigorate the economy.

At $825 billion, the legislation would be one of the largest bills ever to move through Congress, and by traditional standards, lawmakers were moving with unusual speed. Pelosi and Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., the Senate Majority Leader, have pledged to have it ready for Obama’s signature by mid-February.

The measure calls for $87 billion to help the states meet the rising cost of providing health care for the poor in the recession, and another $39 billion to subsidize coverage by out-of-work wage-earners who cannot afford the cost of their employer-covered health care.

More than $100 billion is ticketed for education, including money for school districts to shield them from the effects of state cutbacks in services. Democrats also provided tens of billions in spending and tax breaks designed to lessen the nation’s dependence on oil as a principal source of energy.

“At first glance, it appears that my Democratic colleagues think they can borrow and spend their way back to prosperity with a half trillion dollars of new spending and less tax relief than President-elect Obama has been talking about,” said House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio.

Obama’s top aides have worked closely in recent days with Democrats in Congress to shape legislation that generally adheres to the president-elect’s wishes.

At the same time, lawmakers departed dramatically in one area, jettisoning the incoming administration’s call to give a $3,000 tax credit for each new job created by private companies.

Another key priority of the new administration was preserved, though. The summary calls for a tax credit of $500 per worker and $1,000 per working couple.

The measure does not include money to help middle- to upper-income taxpayers ensnared in the alternative minimum tax, which was originally designed to prevent the extremely wealthy from avoiding payment of taxes but now threatens more than 20 million tax filers. Several officials said the Senate was likely to include that provision in its version of the bill, a step that could push the overall total close to $900 billion.

The legislation is one of two key elements in Obama’s emerging plan to revitalize the economy. He also has lobbied lawmakers not to stand in the way of the use of another $350 billion in financial bailout money.

The Senate was expected to vote on the issue later in the day, and the outcome was so uncertain that a tie vote seemed possible. If so, the money would be released.

With unemployment rising, and applications for various forms of federal aid keeping pace, the legislation calls for increased spending on food stamps, unemployment insurance and job training. It also proposes an increase in Pell Grants for college students of $500.

House leaders called for $30 billion for highway construction and $10 billion for mass transit and rail.

The summary claimed “unprecedented accountability” and said the bill would include no earmarks, the pet projects that lawmakers are fond of.

In addition, Democrats said all announcements of contract and grant competition would be posted on a Web Site to be created by the new administration.

Funds for energy-related programs were sprinkled throughout the legislation, reflecting a priority not only of Obama, but also House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and numerous lawmakers in both houses of Congress.

Included is $32 billion to upgrade the nation’s electrical distribution system, more than $20 billion in tax cuts to promote the development of alternatives to oil fuels, and billions more to make public housing, federal buildings and modest-income homes more energy efficient.

House committees are working on a schedule that calls for votes next week on parts of the bill, which would then be advanced to the floor for a vote during the last week of January.

Across the Capitol, a companion measure is expected to move along roughly the same timeline in the Senate, and congressional leaders have expressed confidence they would be able to agree on a final version by the time of a scheduled vacation coinciding with Presidents’ Day.

Other items in the measure include funds for state and local law enforcement funds, extending broadband service to rural and other underserved areas, and money to computerize health records, a key priority of the incoming president.

Businesses would be able to reduce their taxes through a provision that expands their ability to write off current losses again past profits, and by accelerating the depreciation of new plants and equipment.

First-time homeowners also would get a break. The bill eliminates the requirement for them to repay a new $7,500 tax credit created in a housing measure that passed last summer.

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Public broadcasters have joined U.S. automakers and the porn industry in asking President-elect Barack Obama for a federal cash infusion. NPR, PBS and the Corporation of Public Broadcasting seek a $550 million “stimulus investment in public media,” the trade journal Current reports.

Or is it a bailout? In December, NPR announced the layoffs of 64 people, a budget deficit of more than $20 million, and the cancellation of two programs, including “Day to Day.” Meanwhile, PBS has long struggled financially, and its flagship news program, “News Hour,” is losing money.

Now the public broadcasters have sent a letter (PDF) to the Obama administration, following up on the president-elect’s campaign promise to create a “social investment fund network.” Quoting from Current’s round-up of the letter’s requests:

• The last item in the list amounts to an urgent plea: “Support for station capacity” in a year when pubcasting stations could lose $300 million in revenues according to “preliminary estimates,” putting 1,000 station jobs at risk, the letter said.
• National Public Lightpath, a proposed “super-high-speed” interconnection of schools, nonprofits and government agencies using lightwaves over optical fiber cables. Construction would create 1,800 jobs for a year plus additional jobs in manufacturing; operation would create 270 permanent jobs.
• American Archive, which would preserve, index and clear rights for access to “billions of dollars worth” of historically significant public TV and radio programs. The work would create hundreds of jobs, the letters says.
• A preschool Teach for America program, focused on 100 economically troubled communities, to train teachers and caregivers to use new-media-based educational tools to teach young children how to read. This would create 200 education positions at stations.
• Building a crisis-response capability in 75 communities and creating about 750 positions, including producers and community-engagement staffers. KETC’s CPB-supported work with the mortgage foreclosure issue in St. Louis, is given as an example.
• Access 2.0, a campaign to expand media access to new voices, including startup staffing of 30 planned Native American pubradio stations that received FM licenses during the past year. This would create several hundred positions at local public media institutions and several hundred more outside of stations, the letter estimates.

No word on any response from the incoming Obama administration.

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Ray (left) and Tom Magliozzi, circa a long time ago

This week on the Bottom Line podcast: Ray Magliozzi, on why he supports a 50-cent national gas tax: “We would want to discourage people,” Ray says, “who had no good reason to drive a pick-up truck that got 11 miles per gallon just because they wanted to commute back and forth from Home Depot just to buy plants.”

A little bit of “Car Talk” tax talk with Ray Magliozzi. Plus, WBUR’s Meghna Chakrabarti explains the pros and cons of increasing the gas tax in Massachusetts by 23 cents.

Plus, President-elect Barack Obama proposes a stimulus package as big as $800 billion. We get analysis of Obama’s first speech since the election with columnist Robert J. Samuelson of Newsweek and the Washington Post.

High-tech firm EMC, of Hopkinton, Mass., announces the layoffs of 2,400 people — even though the company boasts record profits this year. WBUR’s Fred Thys visits Hopkinton to gauge the impact on the community.

Finally, the shockwave of Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme reaches the shores of tiny, tony Nantucket. It involves one of the island’s summer residents and a Bulgarian housekeeper.

Subscribe now to our podcast, and let us know what you think. We’re new and open to ideas.

Enjoy!

WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Barack Obama said Thursday the recession could “linger for years” unless Congress pumps unprecedented sums from Washington into the economy.

“I don’t believe it’s too late to change course, but it will be if we don’t take dramatic action as soon as possible,” Obama said in a speech set to be delivered at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., outside Washington. Excerpts from his prepared text were released in advance by his transition team.

It was the fourth day in a row that Obama has addressed this front-burner issue and it was the highest-profile appearance yet on an issue that can define his early months in office.

His events have increasingly taken on the trappings and air of the presidency, with the speech — coming a full 12 days before he takes over at the White House — a particularly showy move. Presidents-elect typically stick to naming administration appointments and otherwise staying in the background during the transition period between Election Day and Inauguration Day, but Obama has clearly made the calculation that a nation anxious about its economic outlook and eager to bid farewell to the current president, George W. Bush, needs to hear from him differently and more frequently.

Indeed, the economic news is grim.

“A bad situation could become dramatically worse,” Obama said, painting a dire picture — including double-digit unemployment and $1 trillion in lost economic activity — that recalled the days of the Great Depression in the 1930s.

Consumers and companies are folding under the negative forces of a collapsed housing market, a global credit crunch and the worst financial crisis since the 1930s. The recession, which started in December 2007, already is the longest in a quarter-century.

A report due out the same day as Obama’s speech is expected to show that the number of newly laid-off people signing up for state unemployment insurance last week rose to 540,000, up from 492,000 in the previous week. The number of people continuing to draw jobless benefits is projected to stay near 4.5 million, demonstrating the troubles the unemployed are having in finding new jobs.

For all of 2008, employers probably slashed payrolls by at least 2.4 million. That’s based on economists’ forecasts for a net loss of 500,000 additional jobs in December, as well as the job losses previously reported. Some, however, think the number of jobs cut last month will be higher, around 600,000 or 700,000. The Labor Department will release that report Friday.

A day after the release of a stunning new estimate — that the federal budget deficit will reach an unprecedented $1.2 trillion this year, nearly three times last year’s record. Obama acknowledged some sympathy with those who “might be skeptical of this plan” because so much federal money has already been spent or committed in an attempt — largely unsuccessful so far — to get credit, the lifeblood of the American economy, flowing freely once again.

Such statements are coded to appeal to budget hawks in both parties, whom Obama wants to win over so that approval of a package draws wide, bipartisan support in the Democratic-led Congress.

To answer their concerns, he promised to allow funding only for what works. He also pledged a new level of transparency about where the money is going. A day earlier, he promised to tackle the out-of-control fiscal problem posed by Social Security and Medicare entitlement programs and named a special watchdog to clamp down on all federal programs.

Obama made broader arguments, too, saying that the private sector, typically the answer, cannot do what is needed now.

“At this particular moment, only government can provide the short-term boost necessary to lift us from a recession this deep and severe,” he said.

Obama’s transition team and Democratic congressional leaders are working daily to hammer out the still-evolving package, expected to total nearly $800 billion. The initial hope had been to have a new stimulus package approved by Congress in time for Obama to sign it upon taking office on Jan. 20. That timeline has slipped considerably, into at least mid-February if not later.

The package is expected to include tax cuts for businesses and middle-class workers, money to help cash-starved states with Medicaid programs and other operating costs, and a huge share for infrastructure building, investments in energy efficiency and a rebuilding of the information technology system for health care. Much of the latter portions of the plan are aimed at what Obama likes to talk about as the need for “reinvestment” and not just “recovery.”

Obama also promised action to address the economy’s ills beyond the package, such as tackling the massive wave of home foreclosures many experts expect, preventing the failure of financial institutions, rewriting financial regulations and keeping accountable the “Wall Street wrongdoers” who engage in risky investing.