Nice try Ezra

Ezra Klein is out in the Washington Post this afternoon explaining that when Obama said there is no such thing as a "shovel ready" project he meant that there would be a delay of a few months after the passage of the stimulus before work would proceed. All I can say is "Nice try Ezra." Klein may not like the honesty displayed by Obama. Klein may not like the fact that Obama showed his ignorance of the public construction process. Klein may not like a presidential statement that explains one of the reasons why the stimulus failed. Nevertheless, creating new "facts" is not the way to cure the problem.

The truth is that projects in the public sector are rarely "shovel ready" if that term means -- as Obama originally used it -- ready for construction and awaiting funds. Most governments use some sort of capital budgeting process. That process requires that a project be approved before any design work is commenced. Oh, there may be a preliminary design as part of the approval process, but there are not detailed design drawings completed ahead of final approval. Once there is final approval, the project is not only commenced, but it is also funded in the capital budget. thus, the only projects that could be shovel ready as Obama used that term are projects that were approved for construction, funded in the capital budget and then stopped when the financial crisis hit in 2008. There simply were not many such projects as of the beginning of 2009 when the stimulus appeared. Indeed, local governments did not want to fire additional workers; they were trying to preserve jobs not add to unemployment. the full impact of decreasing tax revenues had not yet been felt, so capital projects were not halted.

The normal process kicked in when the stimulus passed. This means that various localities either came forward with maintenance projects which would have been done with or without the federal funding, or they came up with projects that were on the capital budget wish list which they could now complete with federal rather than local funds. this is one of the reasons why even those projects that did go ahead had such a small impact on the employment figures.

Had Obama wanted to truly push employment, he should have directed the construction budget to new federal projects. These were items not already on the local drawing boards, so the federal money would not just replace local money; it would have actually added construction jobs rather than just changin who paid for them.

Klein's attempt to "explain" what Obama really meant shows that Klein also has no idea how the process works. That is not surprising. Klein has an opinion on everything but knowledge about much less.

The biggest problem with the Obama stimulus is that inexperienced and unknowledgeable folks who thought they were "experts" decided that things would work in a certain way when that was not possible. We could get 1000 experts including Klein into a room to tell us that the moon is going to change the direction in which it orbits the earth. It would not change anything.