Obama Economic Plan - The Devil Is In The Details

As with most government plans, the devil is in the details. There appears to be no exception to the economic plan as modified in the president-elect's weekly radio address and supporting economic report given yesterday, and reported in today's Toledo Blade. This article, titled "Obama boosts job creation estimate", outlines that speech and report. Two things have struck me when going through this proposal. 

First, the numbers just keep going up, on both the amount of money required and the number of jobs that will be saved or created. We started out with a program at a little over $300,000,000,000. (Yes, it does look scarier when you print out all of those zeroes, doesn't it?) The program outlined in yesterday's address now stands at more than $775,000,000,000. Likewise the number of jobs that will be created or saved is up from the original 2-2.5 million to an estimate yesterday of over 5 million. 

Forgive me if this isn't starting to sound like an old John Lovitz routine from Saturday night live. I can just hear him saying: "I saved two, no it was three, three million jobs. No wait it was four million, no five, five million jobs I saved with my plan." ... and all of this before the president-elect even takes office. I know that there is an expectation of stretching the truth from all politicians, and I know that plans change as more information comes to light; but this taffy pull seems to be getting out of hand. 

Second and more importantly, the president-elect said in this most recent address that of this 5 million jobs, nearly 90 percent will be in the private sector. For those of you who didn't take as many math classes as I did, that means that over 10 percent of the jobs will be government jobs. 

Now adding to your respect for my mathematical abilities, I will further calculate that even 10 percent of 5 million jobs would mean 500,000 new government jobs. This is half a million government salaries, benefit packages, and pension contributions. For those of you who eyes are now widely staring at this page yes, that means that the taxpayers will have to pick up a pretty hefty check for this increase in bureaucracy at a time when our wallets are getting a little lighter already. 

I know that the incoming president has talked about the necessity for budget deficits to jump start the economy, but shouldn't be we looking closely at the burden we push onto our children and theirs. I know that the country needs more jobs. I merely question whether we need any more in a government containing an already bloated bureaucracy. 

The president-elect and I do agree on one other thing in the report released by his economic team in support of this plan as well: "There is a limit on how much government investment can be carried out efficiently in a short time frame." On this snowy Sunday morning I can only add, "Amen, Mr. Obama, amen."