Since then, unemployment has increased as high as 10%, is currently hovering right around 9%, and Obama has candidly admitted that all of those "shovel ready" projects that were supposed to save the economy weren't as "shovel ready" as the White House had hoped.
Now, the President is planning to propose another fiscal stimulus package at the jobs speech on Thursday, except that he'll be careful not to call it a "stimulus" plan lest people associate this new proposal with the old one:
ABC News wrote:
With President Obama set to unveil his plan for job creation at a Joint Session of Congress next week, a former White House economic adviser said today that economic “stimulus†will be part of the package – but won’t be labeled as such.
“You won’t hear the word ‘stimulus’ — the ‘s word’ — because that just is politically unappealing right now,†Jared Bernstein, who left his post as Vice President Joe Biden’s top economist in June, told us on ABC’s “Top Line†today. “But you will hear targeted measures, which I think is actually a more apt description of what I think the president will talk about.â€
“You won’t hear the word ‘stimulus’ — the ‘s word’ — because that just is politically unappealing right now,†Jared Bernstein, who left his post as Vice President Joe Biden’s top economist in June, told us on ABC’s “Top Line†today. “But you will hear targeted measures, which I think is actually a more apt description of what I think the president will talk about.â€
And yet, based on recent polling, that likely won't even be an issue:
Politico wrote:
... a majority (51%) supports a large-scale, federally-subsidized construction program to put Americans back to work building roads, bridges, schools, and hospitals, including 40% of voters who support it strongly. Fifty-two percent of independent voters and a majority of blue-collar voters support this proposal.
How is it possible for anybody to look at the previous stimulus package passed under Obama (or the one passed under Dubya, for that matter), and come to the conclusion that yet another one would be a swell idea?