Shovel-Ready Political Hype

President Obama gave a labor day speech that was billed as the unveiling of a fabulous new “jobs program.”  In it he  inadvertently acknowledged the failure of his stimulus program.

In spite of record unemployment the President had the chutzpah to begin his speech with bragging about his $864 billion stimulus, enacted 18 months ago on the promise that it would, in his words “immediately jumpstart job creation.” As an example of the economic miracles of the stimulus Obama bellowed:

Because of these investments the battered construction sector actually grew last month for the first time in a very long time.

It’s true construction employment grew by 19,000 jobs in August, month 18 of the Great Obama Recovery Plan (GORP).  But that’s after the loss of 842,000 jobs during the first 17 months.

Obama must think we’ve all forgotten the promises he made hyping the stimulus.  Those promises were put in writing by his economic team in a report called: The Job Impact of the American Recovery and Investment Plan.  The report promised massive increases in employment in virtually all sectors of the economy, especially Construction.  The promise was that stimulus borrowing and spending on “shovel-ready projects” would create 678,000 additional, new Construction jobs by the end of this year.

Today, Obama sought to rewrite the history of his pre-stimulus promises:

Here’s the honest truth, the plain truth: there’s no silver bullet, no quick fix to these [unemployment] problems.  I knew when I was running for office – and I certainly knew by the time I was sworn in – I knew it would take time to reverse the damage of a decade worth of policies…We all knew this. we all knew that it would take more time than any of us wanted to dig ourselves out of this hole created by this economic crisis.

But a minute later this line brought us back to that glorious, euphoric stimulus hype of 19 months ago:

Today, I’m announcing a new plan for rebuilding America’s roads and railways and runways for the near term.

Readers interested in details can find a few bullet points at the White House web site.  But no actual legislation has been drafted and there will be no rebuilding program. This was political theater: cynical promises, delivered in the form of applause lines in a holiday speech, with the hope of deceiving a few TV viewers.

There is not enough time for Congress act before the election, and after the election there won’t be enough votes in the House or Senate to enact yet another borrow-spend stimulus scheme.