As America waits for Barack Obama to unwrap his latest "jobs package" on Thursday, political observers are betting it will be big.
The president's failed attempt to address a joint session of Congress at the same time the Republicans had a previously scheduled presidential debate, strongly suggested that his speech will be more politics than policy.
As for the content, insiders believe that Obama will again display his inner John Maynard Keynes and call for another massive "investment" of public dollars in an effort to kick-start a stalled economy that added zero jobs in August.
With the U.S. Gross Domestic Product barely growing at a rate of 1 percent, the White House sees government spending as the only way to keep the economy from sliding back into recession.
Catering to his shrinking political base, Obama will likely double down on his $1 trillion stimulus program from two years ago. Though that spending binge failed to stanch the ongoing rise in private-sector unemployment, doctrinaire Democrats hold it as an article of faith that public-sector largess will trickle down to the private sector.
"With 14 million Americans still looking for work, this is not the time to tinker around the edges," Reps. Ra Grijalva, D-Ariz., and Keith Ellison, D-Minn., wrote to Obama last week. "We must take bold action, and that requires federal emergency jobs legislation."
Calling for an "infrastructure bank" that harkens back to the Works Progress Administration of FDR's New Deal, the co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus said, "The countrys infrastructure needs an estimated investment of $2.2 trillion."
Market-based economists say the Democrats have it backward -- that bigger government spending strangles investment and kills jobs.
But politics, not economics, are the order of the day at the White House. The president's goal is to lay out a big spending ("investment") plan that Republicans will reject, and then campaign on the GOP's opposition to "jobs."
The strategy is risky, however. Obama's job-approval ratings are at all-time lows, and voters appear increasingly skeptical of the president's tax-and-spend bromides.
Sunshine State News' recent investigation of wasteful stimulus spending on "green energy" projects highlighted the inability of government programs to generate sustainable jobs or deliver promised results.
Still, the Washington Post reported that the president may go back to the well for more spending on "environmentally friendly construction" and clean-energy tax cuts.
Been there, done that, skeptics say.
"Projects such as these do nothing to stimulate Americas recovery. Government handouts -- aka federal stimulus funds -- are not the prescription for curing what ails our economy, or our environment," said Bob McClure, president and CEO of the James Madison Institute in Tallahassee.
Pressed to preview his new initiatives, Obama said only:
I will be laying out a series of steps that Congress can take immediately to put more money in the pockets of working families and middle-class families, to make it easier for small businesses to hire people, to put construction crews to work rebuilding our nations roads and railways and airports, and all the other measures that can help to grow this economy."
That sounds eerily similar to what the president told NBC's Brian Williams on Aug. 29 ... last year:
"We anticipated that the recovery was slowing. The economy is still growing, but its not growing as fast as it needs to. Ive got things right now in -- before Congress that we should move immediately, and Ive said so before I went on vacation and Ill keep on saying it when I -- now that Im back.
"We should be passing legislation that helps small businesses get credit, that eliminates capital gains taxes so that they have more incentive to invest right now. There are a whole host of measures that we could take, no single element of which is a magic bullet, but cumulatively could start continuing to build momentum for the recovery."
The administration's Keynesian bias showed last week as Obama hired yet another academic to head the Council of Economic Advisers. As a two-fer, Princeton University professor Alan Krueger is also a labor expert, who can placate Democratic union bosses.
Of late, the president has professed to be more business-friendly, unveiling a series of regulatory-relief initiatives. But the White House quietly admitted that it has in the works 219 new federal rules, each of which carries at least $100 million in annual compliance costs.
Skeptics predict that the president will try to embellish his jobs plan with selective "tax cuts." These likely will include an extension, or expansion, of the 2-percentage point reduction in the payroll tax.
But economists say that modest move has not freed up business capital or encouraged hiring. A better strategy, they offer, would be overall reductions in income-tax rates that affect business owners and investors.
The Post, quoting sources inside and outside the administration, reported that Obama is also considering a tax cut to reward companies for hiring new workers. And he is said to be cribbing a version of a Georgia unemployment insurance program that pays employers to hire jobless workers and provides funding for training.
To lift the housing market, the president may propose a refinancing initiative -- though it is unclear where the money would come from or what its net benefit would be.
Meantime, August's no-growth employment report -- the first time since 1945 that the U.S. economy failed to add jobs in a month -- gave Republican presidential hopefuls more ammunition.
"We gave the White House $2.4 trillion in new spending and the American people got nothing in return," Michelle Bachmann said Friday.
"The latest jobs report is further evidence that President Obama's failed economic policies are not working and have completely stalled job growth."
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Contact Kenric Ward at kward@sunshinestatenews.com or at (772) 801-5341.
