Obama’s Jobs Plan: Timely, Targeted, but Incomplete

by Jim Tankersley
National Journal
Updated: September 9, 2011 | 6:53 a.m.
September 9, 2011 | 6:00 a.m.

When the Obama administration designed its first economic stimulus measure in 2009, it tried to turn a double play of rescuing the country from recession while also advancing key liberal policy goals such as moving from fossil fuels to clean energy.

The stimulus proposals Obama announced on Thursday, in contrast, are tightly focused on one thing: job creation. They are, to borrow an Obamaland phrase, more targeted and more timely jolts for economic activity than the Recovery Act was in the depths of the Great Recession.

If you believe that the biggest reason America sits today on the brink of a double-dip recession is a nosedive in aggregate demand—a vacuum of consumer spending that the federal government can and should fill in order to prop up recovery—then the best news from Obama’s speech was that the president appears to have learned from his past Keynesian mistakes.

For sheer stimulative purposes, the "American Jobs Act" Obama announced before a joint session of Congress appears much better designed than the Recovery Act.

(More here.)