Barack Obama, Whippersnapper (July 6, 2010 11:30 PM)
On page 85 of his excellent quick-history, The Promise, Jon Alter discusses Obama's 2009 stimulus bill:
The biggest frustration involved infrastructure. Obama said later that he learned that "one of the biggest lies in government is the idea of 'shovel-ready' projects." It turned out that only about $20 billion to $40 billion in construction contracts were truly ready to go. The rest were tied up in the endless contracting delays and bureaucratic hassles associated with building anything in America. [E.A.]
a) Good that Obama is still learning, but the realization that the expensive projects he repeatedly assured Americans were "shovel-ready" actually weren't comes a little late, no? The economy needed stimulating 18 months ago. How many unemployed Americans could have had jobs for the last year and a half if Obama had realized the House Dems' "shovel-ready" pitch was a crock and pursued other, quicker forms of stimulus--like an instant payroll tax cut?
b) Did Obama really not know this back in January, 2009? I mean, Alter's book pretty convincincly demonstrates that the President is a very smart man. But a smart man would have to have had virtually no contact, direct or vicarious, with government not to realize state and federal construction projects are bound up with time-consuming rules (like the Davis-Bacon Act's "prevailing wage" requirements) that undermine their Keynesian utility. ... He could have asked Alter, for example.
And here I thought the coming to power of the Democrats was a voyage of discovery only for their youthful journalistic enthusiasts. ... 12:01 A.M.
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