Obama’s Jobs and “Stimulus” Plan: A Bad New Deal for America?

President-elect Obama recently gave a speech detailing his plan to spend nearly $1 trillion on a stimulus package that would add 600,000 new employees to the government payroll while doing nothing to provide for America’s energy future.

Yesterday, Congressional Democrats followed the President elect’s lead and released their own $825 billion plan to juice the economy. Like the President-elect’s plan, the Congressional plan does nothing to lower energy prices or provide real long-term prosperity.

The road back to economic recovery and long-term prosperity will be built by an active, job-creating private-sector, paved by reliable, affordable energy, and financed by the revenues and royalties generated as a result of it. Expanding the government’s payroll in times of unemployment is no different than printing out more money in times of recession—both may change the short-term perception of the economy, but neither will improve the actual performance of it.

You can create all the new government jobs you want, but if those jobs can’t survive the night without the constant nourishment of subsidies, mandates and distorted tax treatment, you haven’t created any new wealth—only re-distributed it. A national policy that requires consumers to pay more for their energy will only price American goods above foreign ones, and contribute to economic decline.

Instead of working to create real prosperity, the President-elect and Congressional Democrats want to increase government spending, subsidies, and increased mandates. This will harm, not help the economy in the long run.

The Institute for Energy Research, AEA’s sister organization, has been hard at work debunking the studies upon which the Obama stimulus plan relies:

• Green Jobs: Fact or Fiction–An Assessment of the Literature
• Job Mirage: Obama “Green Jobs” Plan Requires Expanding Government Payroll with 600K Bureaucrats
• Green Jobs: Robbing Peter to Subsidize Paul
• It Takes a Lot of Government Green to Create a Green Job
• “Stealth Stimulus” Shouldn’t Fly Under Congress’ Radar
• The Obama Energy Agenda

AEA knows that the real solutions to America’s economic challenges will come from real Americans, not from Washington.

How would you stimulate the economy? Join the conversation and comment down below in our comment section.