The media is abuzz with “Breaking News” that in early September the President will outline his latest plan for job creation.   This latest pronouncement, however, may leave Americans wondering if they are like the Bill Murray character in the movie Groundhog Day: forced to relive speech after speech from the President about jobs, but with no different results.  A look back at some prior headlines during the Obama presidency reveals a steady drumbeat of major speeches, plans, summits, and task forces – all supposedly designed to stimulate job growth.  But as the chart below reflects, all those efforts have done nothing to stem 30 straight months of unemployment above 8 percent – a level President Obama promised America would never see under his trillion-dollar stimulus plan.  In fact, by now, the President predicted under his plan the unemployment rate would be 6.5 percent and falling, not stuck above 9 percent for yet another month. 

With more than 70 percent of Americans criticizing his handling of the economy, even some of the President’s strongest allies are seeing through his latest efforts to promote the same old failed stimulus policies. The New York Times noted in an editorial this week that the President’s attitude “[W]ould be much more effective if he combined it with strong ideas of his own for how to fix the economy, rather than the thin agenda he is now promoting.”  And the former Chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, Christina Romer, admitted what the Administration has already tried is not working: “Not proposing anything bold and not trying to do something to definitively deal with our problems would mean that we’re going to have another year and a half like the last year and a half.”

Past Headlines about the Obama Administration’s Previous “Jobs Plans”

• November 22, 2008: “Obama outlines job creation plan”
• January 11, 2009: “Obama’s job plan now tops 4 million”
• February 17, 2009: “Obama signs stimulus to jump start economic recovery”
• June 9, 2009: “Obama confronts doubts on stimulus, vows faster spending”
• June 25, 2009: “Obama signs ‘Cash for Clunkers’  into law”
• November 12, 2009: “Obama to hold jobs summit in December”
• November 26, 2009: “Obama, Democrats assembling a new job-stimulus package”
• December 9, 2009: “Obama outlines job growth initiatives”
• December 16, 2009: “Obama pushes home improvement to create jobs, save energy”
• Jan. 27, 2010: “Obama calls jobs ‘number one’ focus in 2010”
• June 18, 2010: “Obama hopes ‘Recovery Summer’ will warm voters to the stimulus”
• September 6, 2010: “Obama assails GOP, promotes new jobs plan”
• January 21, 2011: “Obama names GE’s Immelt to lead fresh push on jobs”
• June 8, 2011: “Obama announces job training plan”
• August 5, 2011: “Obama unveils major jobs initiative for vets”
• August 16, 2011: “Obama jobs plan unveiled for rural America”
• August 17, 2011: “New Obama job creation plan coming next month”

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