The plan leaks out, or a lead trial balloon

It did not take long for the White House to start leaking the purported details of the new "jobs" program that president Obama will be unveiling in a speech in September. I guess that the pollsters in the White House are busy with focus groups testing what program elements will sell and they decided to use trial balloons as well. This morning's leak said that Obama will call for spending cuts in order to fund a large public works program to create jobs as well as for tax cuts to stimulate the economy. The funny thing is that a program like this which is carried out well could actually help. Of course, it reveals Obama as being totally confused, but it still could work.

For the last few months, we have heard the Obama mantra of "balanced" approach to deficit reduction which is poll tested code for lets raise taxes. The GOP has said that raising taxes in a time of a bad economic growth is self defeating and a poor idea. Obama has called them obstructionists as a result, and other Democrats have used the words terrorists and hostage takers. Now Obama is agreeing with the GOP; cut taxes to stimulate growth. My guess is that Obama will probably call for both tax cuts and tax increases at the same time without giving details. For Obama that is a win-win. For the country, it is a lose-lose.

The public works to be funded by the other spending cuts are more shovel ready jobs. Obama has already admitted that the shovel ready jobs were not really shovel ready. Any program of this sort that Obama just dumps on states and localities will just mean that over the next three or four years there will be additional construction done. There will not, however, be a big boost to the economy since the impact will be so diffuse. There would need to be some big program that could move ahead across the country to improve the infrastructure, something like the interstate highway system of the 1950's and 1960's or the construction of sewage treatment plants of the early 1970's.

Obama's problem is that he cannot manage a program of this sort or even explain his shifting views on taxes. He is back to leading from the asylum.