President Obama is pledging to speed up the spending of ARRA money to “create 600,000 new jobs.”

Eager to show action on the ailing economy, President Barack Obama promised Monday to speed federal money into hundreds of public works projects this summer, vowing that 600,000 jobs will be created or saved.

Surrounded by his Cabinet, Obama emphasized what has become a dominant issue of public concern—an economy that keeps bleeding jobs—on the day after returning from a week of diplomacy and sightseeing in the Middle East and Europe.

Action isn’t what the American people are looking for. They’re looking for solutions. Activity just means that people are doing something. That something isn’t automatically good or bad. Solutions require putting the right policies in place to positively impact people and put them on a path to sustained prosperity.

He concentrated in his remarks on the billions of dollars from a taxpayer-funded plan that will be disbursed this summer, although much what he was described was already in the works, spurring new debate about just how much the $787 billion stimulus plan is helping so far.

Why shouldn’t people be suspicious of the Obama administration’s policies? The Obama administration’s economic team is in disarray, the first sign that they don’t play well together.

People are starting to notice the ineptitude of Team Obama’s economic team:

While 67% of Americans view President Barack Obama favorably, his overall job approval rating and his ratings on specific areas are less positive. At the low end of the spectrum, only 45% of Americans approve of Obama’s handling of federal spending, and 46% of his handling of the federal budget deficit.

Specifically, 45 percent of poll respondants said that they approved of President Obama’s controlling spending while 51 percent said that they don’t approve of his controlling spending. Only 46 percent of poll respondants approve of President Obama’s handling of the deficit vs. 48 percent disapproved. This marks the first time that President Obama has had a negative job approval rating on these issues since taking office.

Ed Morrissey points out why this is significant in this post:

Even worse, a majority now opposes his spending practices, 51%-45%. The latter number comes closer and closer to the base level of his own party, which means Obama is now losing independents on spending. This shows the big opportunity for the GOP in next year’s midterms, when the lack of economic progress from Porkulus will become even more obvious.

If President Obama’s support with independants continues slipping, which it will if the economy doesn’t sharply improve, Democrats running for re-election will be running into a headwind.

House GOP Leader Boehner’s statement questioning the wisdom of whether we should be “doubling down” on President Obama’s stimulus bill is the type of communication I can appreciate because it makes the issue personal:

Today’s announcement is an acknowledgement that the Democrats’ trillion-dollar stimulus is not working, and the American people know it. When they passed this spending plan, Democrats said it would immediately create jobs, yet nearly four months later unemployment has continued to climb and none of their rosy predictions have come true. These policies are harming middle-class families when they can least afford it, and adding to the massive debt we’re passing on to future generations.

The American people know that we can’t borrow and spend our way back to prosperity, and that’s why House Republicans offered a better solution. Our plan to let the American people keep more of what they earn would have created twice the jobs at half the cost of the Democrats’ bloated government spending scheme. But instead of shifting course, Democrats are doubling down on their plan to spend taxpayer dollars as fast as possible, even as their own Vice President admits that the American people are being scammed. Wasting more money that the government doesn’t have, money that is borrowed from China and the Middle East, and will have to be paid back by our kids and grandkids, is the wrong choice. I believe our economy will improve, and Republicans support policies to make that happen faster. But it will not recover because of more wasteful government spending.

Let’s remember that the CBO originally predicted that ARRA does more harm than good:

CBO, the official scorekeepers for legislation, said the House and Senate bills will help in the short term but result in so much government debt that within a few years they would crowd out private investment, actually leading to a lower Gross Domestic Product over the next 10 years than if the government had done nothing.

CBO estimates that by 2019 the Senate legislation would reduce GDP by 0.1 percent to 0.3 percent on net. [The House bill] would have similar long-run effects, CBO said in a letter to Sen. Judd Gregg, New Hampshire Republican, who was tapped by Mr. Obama on Tuesday to be Commerce Secretary.

The release of these additional funds inevitably leads to higher inflation sooner. What isn’t inevitable is that the accelerated release of these funds guarantees accelerated job creation rates.

Let’s say, though, just for discussion’s sake, that this money will lead to accelerated job creation. The next logical question is whether that short burst of money will create sustained consumer spending. I don’t think it will but I can’t prove that. At minimum, though, the best we can say at this point is that it’s possible.

That isn’t the type of hope the American people voted for last November.

Technorati: Economy, President Obama, Job Creation, ARRA, Deficits, Spending, Democrats, CBO

Cross-posted at California Conservative