The media this week is all filled with photo ops and hoos-and-haas of President Obama's non-political bus trip through middle America. Thus far, beyond the pictures of the president eating ice cream and posing with a bunch of kids, the main thing to come out of the trip is Obama's big announcement that he is going to make a big announcement in the future.
This particular future big announcement is going to be about the economy and specifically about creating jobs. Not surprising, considering that the president's approval rating especially with regards to the handling of the economy keeps sliding further and further downhill and threatens to topple over that brink from which he likes to tell us that he pulled America back.
The president promises that this big announcement, to be broadcast in one of those telepromptered speeches of which he is so fond, will come some time in September, after Labor Day, after his upcoming vacation, and after Congress returns from its own holiday. And the announcement will include a plan for bringing the American economy out of its lengthy doldrums and for the creation of jobs.
No doubt this announcement will be different from the many speeches that the president has read in the past in which he has repeatedly pledged that job creation and economic improvement were his primary focus because after all it is the first thing he thinks about every morning. And it is such a pressing issue that is is probably the only thing he thinks about while on his many vacations and political fundraisers. Or while walking from shot to lie on the golf course. Or while hosting poetry slams and rap concerts at the White House.
Because this time, the president promises that he will present a specific plan.
Note to the president's political handlers: Get a dictionary and read the definition of specific. You might want to advise your candidate to choose a more appropriate and loosey-goosey adjective. In other words, tell him not to be too specific in describing the nature of the plan he intends to submit.
Because his previous efforts at and claims of specificity keep leaving the electorate wide-eyed, open-mouthed and with a befuddled “What?” murmured among their sighs. President Obama had a specific plan for dealing with the debt crisis, but no one could ever figure out what it was. Eventually, it appeared that his plan was primarily built upon him being allowed to incur more debt so he could keep spending.
And despite the lack of specificity, that plan appeared to work because eventually the Congress agreed to raise the debt ceiling to allow more borrowing under the promise that the federal government will cut back on some future deficit spending. Not that the government will stop spending more than its revenues, only that it will stop spending as much more than its revenues than the excess spending it planned.
However, back to the specific plan for job creation to be revealed in September, there are already some signs that the specifics of the plan might not be as specific as one would hope. After all, the day after the president announced that he was going to make his September announcement, he started asking for suggestions from those he was meeting on his bus trip. Perhaps they might have some idea of something that might work that he could include in his plan?
And planned leaks from those supposedly in the know to those favored in the media, apparent trial balloons for this future announcement, indicate that there is thus far little difference in the president's specific plan to come and his non-specific plans of the past, other than an idea for the creation of a Department of Jobs that has already been lampooned and apparently discarded.
Of course, as always, raising taxes is at the top of his list because everyone knows that increased taxes creates jobs. And there are various matters languishing in Congress (including some patent reform which has passed both houses of Congress, but still awaits reconciliation because of differences between what the House passed and what the Senate passed) and three trade bills involving Columbia, South Korea, and Panama currently held up by the White House's insistence that semi-related spending measures be tacked on. Nothing new here.
One specific of the plan is likely to be an extension of the existing payroll tax cut. While undoubtedly the vast majority of working Americans will welcome such an extension (meaning a few more dollars kept in their pockets and not sent to the federal treasury), the tax cut would be an extension of an existing program. While those few extra dollars might have meant more dollars winding through the economy and thus jobs preserved, it certainly has done little so far to bolster the creation of new jobs and to increase employment.
Another specific of the plan appears to be yet another spending plan, though unlikely this time to be called a stimulus, at least by the White House and Democrats. They will have to consult a thesaurus for another term since the previous concept of stimulus appears to have lost all meaning in the apparent failure of prior plans where that adjective turned into a pejorative. This time the president is expected to call for massive amounts of spending to rebuild the infrastructure of America, roads, bridges, public buildings, etc. In other words, all those shovel-ready jobs that were not as shovel-ready as the Obama administration believed and thus were left unbuilt despite the expenditure of billions and billions of dollars in the president's first stimulus. Perhaps two years later, someone is finally ready to pick up a shovel.
Beyond these, it is really unclear what specifics that President Obama might include in his specific plan to be announced in September. Of course, such uncertainty is exactly what the White House and its political consultants are counting on. If voters knew the plan, then why would they need to bother to tune in to see the president reading from his teleprompter. Better to keep them guessing than informed.
It makes for better ratings.
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