In the last week I have heard the president-elect mention the budget and what he would do with it as soon as he is sworn in…not sounding too promising, IMO.

Obama said his economic team would go through the federal budget “page by page, line by line, eliminating those programs we don’t need, and insisting that those we do operate in a sensible cost-effective way.”

While he reiterated his earlier statement that “there is only one president at a time,” Obama made it clear that his increasingly frequent appearances before reporters in Chicago—a third press conference is set for Wednesday—is being driven by the deepening economic crisis gripping US and world capitalism and a desire to reassure the financial markets.

The immediate backdrop to the press conference was the announcement of fresh figures indicating that the US economy is continuing to spiral downwards. The Commerce Department reported Tuesday that economic activity had declined at a rate of 0.5 percent during the three months ending in September, while the average American’s disposable income had plummeted during the same period at an annual rate of 9.2 percent, the steepest decline recorded since such figures were first kept in 1947.

Obama drew a sharp distinction between his proposal for an “immediate and temporary infusion that’s going to be required to kick-start our economy” and plans for cutting “the structural spending that’s been taking place in Washington that has created this huge mountain of debt.”

He reiterated that the temporary program he is advocating would “help save or create two-and-a-half million jobs.” While the price tag for the program has been estimated as high as $700 billion, the objectives are wholly inadequate given the depth of the crisis. Nearly half as many jobs as Obama claims would be saved or created over two years have already been wiped out in the past year alone, and new jobless claims have climbed to over half a million a week.

This rhetoric serves only to mask the economic and social realities of the unfolding crisis. Wall Street is being bailed out at the expense of “Main Street.” Average working people, who bear no responsibility for the financial meltdown, are being forced to pay the price for years of financial parasitism and speculation that enriched the top 1 percent, while the vast majority of the population saw its real income stagnate or decline. The inevitable response to the kind of economic austerity policies being prepared by the incoming Obama administration will not be a “banding together” of “Wall Street and Main Street,” but rather a resurgence of class struggle in America.