Explanation Wanted

I think I need to have somebody explain President Obama’s speech before the Congressional Black Caucus last night to me because I don’t believe I understand it. Let me give you some examples.

Consider this:

We knew at the outset of my presidency that the economic calamity we faced wasn’t caused overnight and wasn’t going to be solved overnight. We knew that long before the recession hit, the middle class in this country had been falling behind — wages and incomes had been stagnant; a sense of financial security had been slipping away. And since these problems were not caused overnight, we knew we were going to have to climb a steep hill.

But we got to work. With your help, we started fighting our way back from the brink. And at every step of the way, we’ve faced fierce opposition based on an old idea — the idea that the only way to restore prosperity can’t just be to let every corporation write its own rules, or give out tax breaks to the wealthiest and the most fortunate, and to tell everybody that they’re on their own. There has to be a different concept of what America’s all about. It has to be based on the idea that I am my brother’s keeper and I am my sister’s keeper, and we’re in this together. We are in this thing together.

I agree with that. However

We had a different vision and so we did what was right, and we fought to extend unemployment insurance, and we fought to expand the Earned Income Tax Credit, and we fought to expand the Child Tax Credit — which benefited nearly half of all African American children in this country. (Applause.) And millions of Americans are better off because of that fight. (Applause.)

Ask the family struggling to make ends meet if that extra few hundred dollars in their mother’s paycheck from the payroll tax cut we passed made a difference. They’ll tell you. Ask them how much that Earned Income Tax Credit or that Child Tax Credit makes a difference in paying the bills at the end of the month.

How does the second quotation relate to the first paragraph of the first quotation? Is the president’s plan for “the economic calamity we faced” just to ameliorate the circumstances of those hardest hit? I think we should that but I don’t think it’s hardly enough.

There are some hints later on:

Right now we’ve got millions of construction workers out of a job. So this bill says, let’s put those men and women back to work in their own communities rebuilding our roads and our bridges. Let’s give these folks a job rebuilding our schools. Let’s put these folks to work rehabilitating foreclosed homes in the hardest-hit neighborhoods of Detroit and Atlanta and Washington. This is a no-brainer.

Will that put “millions of construction workers” back to work? Even the most sanguine of estimates of the number of jobs for construction workers created by the ARRA, the first stimulus package, are much, much smaller than that. Will this second, smaller package be that much more successful?

Or this:

Why should we let China build the newest airports, the fastest railroads?

I think I know the answer to this question: because we built our airports a long time ago and China is just catching up and whether high speed rail is worthwhile is in question, even in China after their major high speed rail accident a few months ago.

There are also a number of shout-outs about the importance of education. I wonder if the president is aware that only about 8% of the degrees in science and engineering are awarded to black graduates while African Americans make up about 14% of the U. S. population, a significant discrepancy. Does the president believe that the jobs of the future that education is preparing students for will not be in science or engineering?

I’m not being snarky or sarcastic here. I’d genuinely like to know. I don’t see the connections between the problems and the solutions.