Monday, June 13, 2011

Video: Obama jokes about "shovel ready" projects


The Blaze: Shovel-ready jobs were supposed to be a staple of Obama’s Recovery Act. It was a big justification for spending the money involved in the legislation. But soon after using the phrase to sell his recovery plan, word started leaking out there there was no such thing as a shovel-ready job. Obama himselfadmitted that.
So maybe it’s not surprising that today, Obama once again backpedaled on the shovel-ready mantra. Fox Nation reports:
President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness met today in Durham, NC at Cree Inc., a company that manufactures energy-efficient LED lighting. One of the Council’s recommendations to President Obama was to streamline the federal permit process for construction and infrastructure projects. It was explained to Obama that the permitting process can delay projects for “months to years … and in many cases even cause projects to be abandoned … I’m sure that when you implemented the Recovery Act your staff briefed you on many of these challenges.” At this point, Obama smiled and interjected, “Shovel-ready was not as … uh .. shovel-ready as we expected.” The Council, led by GE’s Jeffrey Immelt, erupted in laughter.

Hee Haw! Just think, that little knee slapper only cost your children a cool $1 trillion! Considering how vulnerable Obama is on the jobs front, he should not be laughing. Heck, even Mitt Romney can score a winner with this ad on "speed bumps on the road to recovery".

1 comment:

Hot Sam said...

I wrote about a "shovel ready" project in my (Nancy Pelosi's) district. The project had already been approved by the city to add new wheelchair ramps on several street corners. They just took their approved project off the shelf and added it to the list for federal funding.

The job cost $6 million, took more than six months to complete, and produced 9 full-time equivalent jobs according to the ARRA website.

And while people in wheelchairs can now roll unobstructed across the peninsula, cars are falling into potholes the size of meteor craters.

Signs have been up on an ARRA highway project on I-80 for more than two years, and I haven't seen a single worker do so much as place an orange cone.

But Joe Biden was supposed to personally ensure that not one penny was wasted!

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