In consecutive weeks, President Obama has presented two painfully unserious and economically misguided proposals. The first, his $450 billion “American Jobs Act,” is another stimulus proposal, based on the ill-conceived notion that more government spending is the answer to what ails the economy. The second is the president’s plan to raise taxes by $1.5 trillion on American job creators. Both plans are a far cry from “winning the future,” as the president claims on the campaign trail. Like the president’s last stimulus, which cost nearly $1 trillion and failed to turn the economy around, Stimulus 2.0 assumes that massive government spending on feel-good projects (with the administration picking the economic winners and losers) will result in job creation and jolt the economy out of its doldrums. This assumption is already a proven loser.

Stimulus 1.0 ended in bad investments, massive corporate welfare, wasteful spending and more debt. What was supposed to keep unemployment below 8 percent, create millions of new jobs and hasten the economic recovery instead stands as a textbook example of the failed liberal notion that we can spend our way out of an economic hole.