President Obama’s jobs speech tonight outlined a wish list of $450 billion in infrastructre spending, tax cuts, tax credits and a host of other goodies. Up front the president made a bold promise about the cost of the bill:
So how will the president come up with an extra $450 billion when the national debt has already gone up three trillion on his watch? Here’s how:
This approach is basically the one I’ve been advocating for months. In addition to the trillion dollars of spending cuts I’ve already signed into law, it’s a balanced plan that would reduce the deficit by making additional spending cuts; by making modest adjustments to health care programs like Medicare and Medicaid; and by reforming our tax code in a way that asks the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations to pay their fair share. What’s more, the spending cuts wouldn’t happen so abruptly that they’d be a drag on our economy, or prevent us from helping small business and middle-class families get back on their feet right away.
So in other words, the plan will be paid for as soon as the Congressional super committee figures out how, and they have to do it in the next three months. The president gets to propose a series of of policy proposals he likes and then bears little to none of the repsonsibility for figuring out how to pay for them. Which is awfully politically convienent for the president, who’s probably already plotting a reelection campaign where he tries to blame his failures on Congress. Good political strategy? Maybe. Courageous and likely to create jobs? No.
As for the president’s plan to reduce a deficit reduction plan to be named later — we’ll see how bold that plan is, but so far the president’s promise to pay for his ambitious jobs package is all sizzle, no steak.
