US: Obama’s Un-’Patriotic’ Economic Plan

US: Obama’s Un-’Patriotic’ Economic Plan – Investors.com

Leadership: With the already weak economy faltering, the president goes on TV to offer nothing but recycled promises, job-killing tax hikes, a sham deficit plan, phony tuition cuts and more of the same failed energy policy.
In a two-minute TV ad now airing in swing states around the country, Obama tells viewers about his plan for the next four years. It’s a good thing he gave himself only two minutes, since any more would have exposed just how vacuous his ideas are.


His “plan,” in fact, is just a grab bag of retread promises he’s already failed to deliver on, new promises he has no hope of fulfilling, a budget plan already exposed as a complete fraud and a tax hike guaranteed to destroy jobs. Not one of these ideas will turn around the increasingly desperate economy.
Here’s the rundown:
One million more manufacturing jobs. Funny, didn’t Obama promise that very thing four years ago? In 2008, he said his $150 billion “investment” in clean energy would “create millions of new jobs” in manufacturing. What we got were bankruptcies, political patronage and few jobs. Maybe that’s why Obama’s being so vague about how, exactly, he plans to make good on his latest version of that promise.
Cut oil imports in half. This from the president who has hampered oil and gas development on federal lands and offshore, crippled the coal industry with new environmental regulations and blocked the Keystone pipeline. Meanwhile, his green energy efforts have been a massive waste. Perhaps Obama’s bold plan to tap our vast supply of algae will save the day.
Cut college tuition growth in half. This is about as realistic as his promise four years ago to cut insurance premiums by $2,500. Less so, actually, because this time around he has nothing to back it up.
Hire 100,000 math and science teachers. Obama wants to spend $1 billion to create a math and science teacher corps. But Democrats already tried to arrange funding for a similar program last year and failed to even get a bill on the floor of either the House or Senate.
Cut the deficit by $4 trillion. Obama claims his latest budget will cut the deficit a total of $4 trillion in 10 years. But his own budget document shows only $2 trillion in total deficit reduction (it’s on page 206 of the Summary Tables section, for those who want to see for themselves).
In fact, the Congressional Budget Office says Obama’s plan would add $3.5 trillion in deficits over the next decade. Even Erskine Bowles, the Democratic co-chair of Obama’s deficit commission, says Obama’s plan “falls short.”
And Obama has the audacity to call this worthless collection of junk proposals “economic patriotism”?