Obama's Latest Grand Plan: Massive Public Works Projects

It's been done before. It was called the WPA, CCC, and TVA (among other alphabet agencies spawned by FDR's New Deal.

The problem is that we aren't facing 30% unemployment and much of the nation already has been built out with infrastructure. The problem is that we've been borrowing to pay for the upkeep on existing infrastructure and no one has any money to pay to maintain it, the federal government included. Throwing billions more at transportation projects around the nation isn't going to create new jobs - it's going to keep those already in the construction industry busy. It's going to keep the unions busy.

A transportation stimulus package will not create new jobs in other industries, and will further spend money that the nation simply doesn't have.

President-elect Barack Obama said Saturday he's asked his economic team for a recovery plan that saves or creates more than 2 million jobs, makes public buildings more energy-efficient and invests in the country's roads and schools.

"We won't just throw money at the problem," Obama said in his weekly radio address and Internet video. "We'll measure progress by the reforms we make and the results we achieve — by the jobs we create, by the energy we save, by whether America is more competitive in the world."

Obama's remarks come after the Labor Department announced Friday that employers cut 533,000 jobs in November, the most in 34 years.

He wants to spend billions to make government buildings more efficient. Try closing a few. Federal spending is out of control, and making government buildings more energy efficient sounds great in principle, but isn't that something that should already be included in operational and maintenance budgets? Replacing incandescent bulbs with CFLs isn't exactly rocket science, and the savings would be considerable across the entire government. We don't need a massive infusion of billions of dollars to do that. We need common sense from building operators throughout the country to do it.

The idea of spending billions to upgrade the transportation infrastructure again sounds like a great idea, but what exactly are we talking about? Are we going to completely redo the FAA's computer systems to enable GPS positioning and advanced ground control so that planes can fly closer together and no longer need to be confined to traffic corridors that are maxed out, especially during peak periods? Does it mean billions spent to upgrade Amtrak's Northeast Corridor to enable Acela to actually run at the high speeds that it was originally intended to do - about 140 mph, which would substantially cut down on congestion in the Northeast and possibly provide Amtrak with a route that actually makes money over the long run?

Does it mean rebuilding bridges and tunnels in places that actually need them rather than building stuff for the sake of building them?

New York City could use a new freight rail tunnel between New Jersey and Brooklyn to relieve congestion along its existing bridges and tunnels because there is only one circuitous rail route off Long Island, and the failure to build a rail tunnel has doomed millions of people to unending congestion and increased traffic and transit costs as a result of delays and traffic. The City could also use federal funds to complete the full length of the Second Avenue line, rather than just the section already under construction. It too would relieve congestion and spur economic development.

In Chicago, much of that city's famous elevated subway is in dire need of replacement and reconstruction because the city has mismanaged its resources and shirked its responsibility to maintain the system.

The aforementioned projects would benefit the largest number of people, but they're also among the most costly propositions, in the tens of billions of dollars if work started today.

Obama wants to upgrade schools, which again sounds great in theory, but the practice has been anything but successful. New Jersey's example is a textbook example of a disaster. Billions spent on schools and a fraction of the projects were completed. Corruption, graft, and broken promises were the hallmark of the New Jersey experience. There's no reason to believe that the federal government would do any better.

If anything, billions would be consumed by the federal government bureaucracy and never find its way into actually getting anything done. Jobs may be created, but they're not ones that are in the private sector; it would be growth in government jobs that become nearly impossible to cut since they have the power of the unions backing them.

Wizbang has more on Obama's proposals and criticizes its lack of focus on power generation and transmission. Ed Morrissey slams Obama's transportation proposals as not only unaffordable, but makes mincemeat of Eisenhower's intentions when setting up the Interstate highway system. It wasn't a jobs program that spurred Eisenhower to build the Interstate highways; it was national defense.

Now, perhaps Obama is using the jobs program as a way to get people to spend money in a roundabout way to improve the nation's ability to send equipment and materials in case of disasters (and that's actually a sound reason to upgrade transportation systems nationwide given failures in hurricanes and other natural disasters), but there's no reason to think that Obama thinks in those terms. To Obama, this is strictly a jobs program.