(Thumbnail image: The White House)

“President Obama’s plan to create new jobs involves using unspent TARP funds, but can more government spending actually help the sagging job market?” (FOX News)

With more than 15 million Americans out of work President Obama is under pressure from all sides to create new jobs and fast.  His top economic adviser predicts job growth in 2010 and calls it Obama’s No. 1 priority.  There’s a push to open more credit to small businesses and also to extend unemployment benefits.

We’re taking a look at whether Obama is doing enough to save and create jobs with perspectives from FOX News, CNN, The New York Times, MSNBC, and ABC News.

On CNN’s State of the Union, analysts say poor jobs numbers are getting Democrats antsy for growth and anxious about next year's mid-term elections.   

“It is very clear that this administration is extremely nervous that the economy is not turning around as quickly as they’d hoped."

"And I think if they were to pass healthcare, the presumption was they would get a huge political bounce out of healthcare reform.  And now lots of folks are saying, hmm, maybe they won’t because people are so focused on jobs and then they're also focused on the question of the deficit”

A New York Times editorial argues the deficit is important, but jobs should take precedent.

“…Creating jobs and ensuring that the incipient economic recovery does not stall, are more important right now. And, as Mr. Obama pointed out, the bank bailout is expected to cost $200 billion less than earlier estimates, which opens space in the budget.”

Connell McShane of FOX Business News says Obama is ignoring calls to use the $200 billion in leftover TARP money to pay down the national debt, preferring instead to spend it on target job creation.

“There have been some jobs saved or created by the stimulus plan.  There’s just an argument over how many.  It’s very, very difficult to quantify a saved job.  However, most economists will tell you some have been created, and the administration argues the most effective measures of the stimulus have been direct spending on things like road construction—things that you spend money, job is created by person that does that job immediately.”

On MSNBC, political writer, A.B. Stoddard, says the president will call on Wall Street bankers to get on board with job creation, by extending credit to small businesses.

“He’s really got to make a huge push.  He can’t spend a whole lot more government money to create jobs, Alex, we’ve talked about this before.  He has to make a huge push to try to get the banks to start lending again, so we can see some more small business credit.  And that’s a message we’re going to hear over and over again.”

But on ABC’s This Week, liberal commentator, Arianna Huffington, says Obama and his economic team are being too light-handed with bankers.

“There’s actually a lot more that he can do.  For Larry Summers to say the president needs to encourage the bankers to lend is really for the president to give up on his responsibility, which is to be the head of the executive branch.  He’s not a pundit cajoling and admonishing, which he’s been doing constantly.”

So do you think President Obama is on the right track to add jobs?  Or is his approach too hands off?

Writer: Chance Seales

Producer: Jess Blumensheid