Obama jobs plan may not be enough

President Obama plans to unveil his latest jobs blueprint in about a month. Great news for millions of out-of-work Americans. But why a month? Americans have been led to believe that President Obama had concrete plans Republicans and tea party activists just weren’t accepting. Where is that plan? And where are all these billions of dollars going to come from, and how are our children and grandchildren going to pay these bills?

Reportedly, his latest plan will earmark tens of billions of dollars for renovating of public schools and giving tax breaks to businesses. Weren’t those the objectives of the stimulus plan, replete with the shovel-ready projects? Or will Obama’s new plan be an updated version of President Franklin Roosevelt’s Depression-era Civil Conservation Corps? The CCC is rightfully credited with, at least temporarily, rescuing millions of jobless Americans from long food lines. But Roosevelt’s shovel-ready jobs corps has never been credited by any historian for having either addressed or solved the economic problems that faced Americans during the Depression.

Roosevelt would probably be the first to acknowledge that his make-work projects never addressed a single economic factor that had brought on the Great Depression. But than, neither would a president like Roosevelt ever have promised Americans that he would get around to solving that greatest economic calamity that ever faced this nation, just as soon as he returned from vacation. That was also a time in America, when “breaking news” of economic recovery wasn’t leaked by White House officials speaking on condition of anonymity. Are these the signs of a real plan or acts of desperation bubbling to the surface?

Patrick J. Dalton

Northbrook