Obama Still Wants to Spend More $$$ on 'Infrastructure'

Thanks to the 2009 stimulus plus the fact that President Obama and the Senate Democrats haven’t even passed a budget since then, stimulus spending is now our national baseline. The lack of a budget also does a good job of helping the president dodge accountability for how our money is being spent.

But none of that is enough, apparently, so Obama is once again calling for even more government spending.

President Obama on Wednesday renewed his call for Congress to spend $50 billion to improve the nation’s roads and infrastructure.

The proposal is a repackaging of Obama proposals from his 2011 “American Jobs Act” and he previewed it in last week’s State of the Union address.

The White House outlined the plan in a press release Wednesday, saying Obama wants to spend $40 billion on “most urgent upgrades” to highways, bridges, public transportation systems and airports.

The remaining $10 billion of the plan would go toward the creation of a national infrastructure bank, which Obama has also called for in the past. The entire program is dubbed “fix it first” by the White House.

If the president really wanted to help improve things, he would approve the XL Pipeline, rein in the EPA’s regulatory regime, and abolish ObamaCare. Those three decisions would unleash hiring across the country. He isn’t doing any of that. Instead, he is rehashing ideas that are centered on helping his party ahead of the nation.

“Shovel ready” wasn’t shovel ready last time around, and there’s no reason to think that it’s any more shovel ready this time. But getting actual shovels to move actual earth isn’t the point. It looks like the Obama White House is hoping to build support for a slush fund it can use to spend however it wants. That means the lion’s share of the billions will end up in the coffers of Big Labor in one way or another, and in turn some will end up back in Democrat party coffers in time for the 2014 mid-terms. A curious press might wonder if the president is engaged in a form of laundering taxpayer dollars. That’s certainly what this looks like.

Oh, and if anyone was wondering: Obviously, Barack Obama has no intention of cutting government spending, anywhere, anyhow, anytime. He is a textbook tax and spend liberal with more than a dash of socialism.