More Economic Poison Presented as Medicine

Perhaps it should no longer be surprising, but it is:

Spelling out painful priorities, President Barack Obama urged Congress on Monday to quickly approve a huge new shot of spending for recession relief and job creation, part of a record $3.8 trillion budget that would boost the deficit beyond any in the nation's history while only slowly beginning to put Americans back to work.

If Congress goes along with Obama's election-year plan, the nation would still end the year with unemployment pushing double digits at 9.8 percent and this year's pool of government red ink deepening to $1.56 trillion under the administration's accounting.

The spending blueprint for next year calls for tax cuts for workers and business and more aid for cash-starved state governments as well as the unemployed. The jobs initiative largely mirrors last year's stimulus bill, but is about one-third its size. The president is asking for nearly $300 billion for recession relief and job stimulus.

Does the administration really think the last stimulus bill worked? Or does it really think that the American people think it did? Or is President Obama so ideologically rigid that he can believe that no other strategy exists?

With every public statement, I suspect more Americans move past the point of hoping that the president will learn in office, which is tragic, because he didn't give the impression of knowing very much before he entered it.