In announcing his latest (but not last) trillion-dollar bill this week, President Biden made many spending and other promises that sound oddly familiar. That’s because his 2021 American Jobs Plan reprises many of the same themes — and lots of the same spending — included in the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, commonly known as the Obama stimulus law. The table below compares how President Obama and then-Vice President Biden characterized key policies in their 2009 stimulus law when it was signed on February 17, 2009 with how President Biden described his American Jobs Plan this week.
President Obama dubbed then-Vice President Biden the “sheriff” charged with implementing the 2009 stimulus law. After that enormous legislation failed to meet the job creation and other promises of its supporters, House Democrats lost the majority in the 2010 elections. Now President Biden’s American Jobs Plan proposes spending over twice as much as the Obama stimulus law, while “modernizing” some of the same infrastructure the 2009 law promised to “create” or “rebuild.” It remains to be seen whether this latest plan will be enacted — and if so will yield different results from the last such “once-in-a-generation” legislation enacted 12 years ago.
| Issue | Obama and Biden on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (February 17, 2009) | Biden on the American Jobs Plan (March 31, 2021) |
| Providing historic “investment” | “(W)e are remaking the American landscape with the largest new investment in our nation’s infrastructure since Eisenhower built an Interstate Highway System in the 1950s.” (President Obama) | “It’s a once-in-a generation investment in America, unlike anything we’ve seen or done since we built the Interstate Highway System and the Space Race decades ago.” |
|
Creating jobs |
“…it will create or save 3.5 million jobs over the next two years…” (President Obama) | “Altogether, along with the American Rescue Plan, the proposal I put forward will create millions of jobs — estimated by some Wall Street outfits: over 18 million jobs over four years…” |
| Benefitting the middle class | “Last time an economic recovery occurred after a deep recession, the middle class got left behind — the middle class got left behind. And that’s why the President has set up a White House Council on the Task Force on the Middle Class, which he’s asking me to chair.” “(W)e’re also going to make sure that America is — as we recover, that American middle class is not left behind.” (Vice President Biden) | “It’s time to build our economy from the bottom up and from the middle out, not the top down. It hadn’t worked very well. For the economy overall, it hadn’t worked — because Wall Street didn’t build this country; you, the great middle class, built this country.” “And it’s time — in this time, we’ll rebuild the middle class.”
|
|
Promoting green energy |
“(W)e are taking big steps down the road to energy independence, laying the groundwork for new green energy economies that can create countless well-paying jobs.” (President Obama) | “The American Jobs Plan will lead to a transformational progress in our effort to tackle climate change. … Skilled workers, like one we just heard from, building a nationwide network of 500,000 charging stations, creating good-paying jobs…” |
| Upgrading the electric grid | “The investment we’re making today will create a newer, smarter electric grid that will allow for broader use of alternative energy.” (President Obama) | “As you saw in Texas and elsewhere, our electric and power — power grids are vulnerable to storms, catastrophic failures, and security lapses, with tragic results. My American Jobs Plan will put hundreds of thousands of people to work…laying thousands of miles of transmission line; building a modern, resilient, and fully clean grid…” |
| Weatherizing homes | “It’s an investment that will…save working families hundreds of dollars a year on their energy bills by weatherizing over 1 million homes.” (President Obama) | “We’ll build, upgrade, and weatherize affordable, energy-efficient housing and commercial buildings for millions of Americans.” |
| High-speed rail | “…building high-speed rail lines that will improve travel and commerce throughout our nation.” (President Obama) | “You and your family could travel coast to coast without a single tank of gas onboard a high-speed train.” |
| High-speed internet | “…bringing critical broadband connections to businesses and homes in nearly every community in America…” (President Obama) | “American Jobs will make sure every single — every single American has access to high quality, affordable, high-speed Internet for businesses, for schools.” |
| Roads and bridges | “Because of this investment, nearly 400,000 men and women will go to work rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges…” (President Obama) | “It modernizes transportation infrastructure — our roads, our bridges…” |
| Research and development | “(T)his recovery act represents the biggest increase in basic research funding in the long history of America’s noble endeavor to better understand our world.” (President Obama) | “The American Jobs Plan is the biggest increase in our federal non-defense research and development spending on record.” |
Sources: President Obama and Vice President Biden on the signing of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, February 17, 2009, and President Biden on the introduction of the American Jobs Plan, March 31, 2021.
The post President Biden’s familiar-sounding promises about the American Jobs Plan appeared first on American Enterprise Institute – AEI.