President Barack Obama revealed his administration's next major national stimulus On Labor Day in Milwaukee – a $50 billion capital investment in our nation's infrastructure.
This newest stimulus will call for a six-year investment period and will require congressional approval. It will be part of the broad transportation policy typically up for revision every five years.
Since the initial stimulus, many leading economists have lamented that the original amount was too small, especially when considering the nation's infrastructural needs.
This most recent effort by Obama, however, will likely not go far enough. For decades the nation has under-spent on infrastructure, leading to crumbling roads, bridges and public utilities.
According to Laura Tyson, the former chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisers, United States spending on infrastructure was virtually the same in 2008 that it was in 1968, in real dollar terms.
The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that $1.6 trillion would be required over a five-year period to bring the United States' infrastructure to good condition.
That's more than the initial American Recovery and Reinvestment Act revised price tag of $814 billion.
And with stated unemployment increasing for the first time in four months to 9.6 percent (mostly due to layoffs of more than 500,000 temporary U.S. Census workers), that number is sure to go up soon.
As the nation's economic recovery continues to look bleak, the White House seems to be pulling out all the stops in order to spark the economy before November elections.
But the effects of investment in infrastructure will take longer than that to trickle down through the economy.
The nation is going through its greatest economic restructuring since the Great Depression. And yet, neither the White House nor Congress has any economic achievements to point to other than a virtually unmeasurable statistic, so-called "jobs saved."
As of now, the simple fact remains that the current administration has done little other than add to the nation's ballooning debt. The initial stimulus packages and those released thereafter should have been larger or not been made at all.
Fuzzy math and false promises won't turn our economy around. Only a major investment in the American people will do so.