INDIANAPOLIS — "We will add hundreds of miles of roads, assets we never would have had otherwise, to our public works inventory. A new construction record will be set every year for the next decade, with thousands of new jobs attached to each year's record."
The quote sounds remarkably like President Barack Obama's recent pitch for billions of dollars in road and bridge rehabilitation to spur job growth. But it actually came from Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels as he basked in the $3.8 billion leasing of the Indiana Toll Road in his 2007 State of the State speech.
When Daniels was lobbying for the measure in 2006, he called it "the jobs vote of a generation." Now Obama is touring the nation lobbying for a similar infusion of government spending to pay for roads and bridges, school buildings and teachers and firefighters.
Daniels, however, is not a fan of the Obama plan and suggested the president's new jobs plan amounts to a second stimulus plan.
"I found the plan very disappointing, ‘hair of the dog' economics, like when a person has already drunk way too much and some guy says, ‘Have another, it'll make you feel better,'" Daniels said last week in an email to The Associated Press. "These attempts at trickle-down government have already failed more than once and are not the answer now."
Although both plans rely on construction and government spending to create jobs, there is a key difference between them: Daniels raised $3.8 billion by leasing the toll road — and the right to raise and collect tolls on Indiana drivers — to foreign investors. Obama wants to pay for his plan with additional spending reductions in the federal budget from the congressional deficit reduction committee.
All told, the White House estimates the plan would spend $1.8 billion in Indiana creating or saving more than 24,000 jobs, plus another $440 million creating additional jobs by rehabilitating community colleges, vacant homes and businesses.
Since he announced the plan to a joint session of Congress earlier this month, Obama has gotten a tepid response from Republicans nationwide.
Gov. Rick Scott and other Florida Republicans said last week they may reject the money if Congress approves the package. Daniels' spokeswoman, Jane Jankowski, said Daniels is not ready to reject federal aid but will not accept any money that comes with federal mandates or other strings as he did in 2009 with federal stimulus dollars.
Indiana Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Luke Kenley said he's unlikely to support taking additional money from the federal government if Congress approves the Obama jobs plan. The state was right to take the federal stimulus money the first time around, he said, but when that money dried up this year, the state was left to find another way to pay for programs.
"We had to dig in our own pockets just to get back to even," the Noblesville Republican said.
Ironically, states could still end up picking the tab for the new jobs and construction, Kenley said. Additional cuts in federal spending could force the congressional committee looking at deficit reduction to push more costs down to the states via cuts to programs like Medicaid, he said.
Obama's "handing out candy, but he's giving lemons to those guys," Kenley said.
Brad and Jen Murray, an Indianapolis couple and parents to quadruplets, flew to Washington two weeks ago for a "tweetup" about Obama's jobs plan with White House press secretary Jay Carney. Brad Murray was laid off in 2009 and started his web design company "4tunate Design," an allusion to their four sons, last year to stay afloat.
"I don't think it's government's role to spend money to stimulate the economy," Brad Murray said last week. Murray said he is a conservative, but not overtly political.
Murray said he and his wife appreciated the meeting with Carney and other White House advisers and that he supports parts of the president's plan dealing with tax reform. The White House's talk about focusing on small businesses ignores the fact that many small businesses rely on big business clients to fill their coffers, he said.
House Republicans are in the process of breaking apart the Obama plan into pieces right now. Measures like cutting the payroll tax paid by employers and extending last year's cut to the tax paid by workers will likely get broad support from Congressional Republicans, U.S. Sen. Dan Coats said.
"If we're just perpetuating public jobs and simply doing it on a temporary basis, we're only postponing the inevitable," Murray said.
If Obama wants to spend on infrastructure, he should look to creative measures like Daniels' privatization of the toll road, the Indiana Republican said.
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