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Paul Koring

Washington — From Tuesday's Globe and Mail Published on Monday, Sep. 06, 2010 11:42AM EDT Last updated on Monday, Sep. 06, 2010 8:32PM EDT

Beleaguered U.S. President Barack Obama promised Americans a $50-billion plan to build roads, runways and railways designed to kick-start a stalled economy, create jobs and avert the looming decimation of Democrats in November’s elections eight weeks from today.

“All of this will not only create jobs immediately, it’s also going to make our economy hum over the long haul,” Mr. Obama, tieless and with his sleeves rolled up, told blue-collar workers, many of them wearing union T-shirts. The plan for the infusion of infrastructure billions will be followed Wednesday with one for sweeping tax cuts to sweeten small business.

In his Labour Day speech yesterday in rust-belt Milwaukee, where one in five families lives below the poverty line, Mr. Obama launched a barrage of attacks on Republicans – blaming them for the current economic malaise.

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U.S. President Barack Obama salutes from the steps of the Marine One helicopter on the South Lawn of the White House on September 5, 2010, in Washington, DC. The president spent the weekend at Camp David.

“These are the folks whose policies helped devastate our middle class and drive our economy into a ditch,” the President said.

Labour Day traditionally kicks off the fall election campaign season and Mr. Obama wants to convince Americans that he has the economy under control.

“We knew it would take time to reverse the damage of a decade’s worth of policies that saw a few folks prosper,” the President said. “It will take more time than any of us wants to dig out of the hole created by this economic crisis.”

But Democrats may be running of out time with voters.

The President, whose party currently controls both houses of Congress, offered few details of the $50-billion plan to rebuild America’s creaky highways, link cities with high-speed, European-style super trains and add nearly 250 kilometres of new airport runways. But it was billed as just the start of an ambitious, six-year plan.

The soaring promises and Mr. Obama’s rousing, campaign-style speech may sway some voters and boost the fortunes of Democrats currently facing defeat in November’s midterm elections. But leading Republicans quickly dismissed it as more wrong-headed economics from a tax-and-spend President.

“We don’t need more government ‘stimulus’ spending. We need to end Washington Democrats’ out-of-control spending spree, stop their tax hikes and create jobs by eliminating the job-killing uncertainty that is hampering our small businesses,” said Ohio’s John Boehner, the Republican leader in the House of Representatives.

Mr. Obama is expected to unveil a $100-billion tax-credit package for small business Wednesday in Cleveland, another city staggering as the nation digs out of the worst economic hole since the Great Depression.

Even before the President’s latest efforts to revitalize the economy with a mix of spending and tax breaks, Mr. Obama was being accused of “just flailing around.”

“We always like to see deathbed conversions,” jibed Senator John McCain, referring to the President’s new embrace of tax cuts. Americans “have lost confidence in … this President’s ability to get this economy going again.”

Not all Americans.

Terry O’Sullivan, President the Laborers’ International Union of North America, was quick to laud the President’s plan, calling it “exactly what our nation needs.” One in five construction workers does not have a job.

With the national unemployment rate at 9.6 per cent and only one in four Americans telling pollsters they “strongly approve” of the President’s performance (46 per cent “strongly disapprove”) Mr. Obama must prove to voters that the issue they most care about – jobs and the economy – is his priority.

“I’m going to keep fighting, every single day, to turn this economy around; to put our people back to work; to renew the American dream for your families and for future generations,” the President told Milwaukee’s LaborFest.

His critics say Mr. Obama is doing too little, too late.

Months of political brawling to pass sweeping health-care reforms sapped Mr. Obama’s political capital while other high-profile presidential priorities, including escalating the bloody conflict in Afghanistan or relaunching Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, stir little interest among voters.

Mr. Obama now seems determined to make good on his claims that job creation is his top priority.

Republicans served notice that they wouldn’t back Mr. Obama’s plans, a standoff Democrats actually seek so they can portray the Republicans as obstructionist or “the party of ‘No.’ ”

The President lampooned his Republican critics.

“When it comes to just about everything we’ve done to strengthen the middle class to rebuild our economy, almost every Republican in Congress says ‘no.’ Even on things we usually agree on, they say ‘no,’ ” adding; “If I say the sky is blue, they say ‘no.’ If I said fish live in the sea, they’d say ‘no.’ ”

In the Senate, where Republican chances of erasing the Democrat majority in November are far slimmer, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, called Mr. Obama’s Milwaukee package “a last-minute, cobbled-together stimulus bill” that won’t alter voters’ “complete lack of confidence” in the President’s ability to run the economy.

Americans face two months of increasingly frenetic campaigning and a pair of starkly irreconcilable views about political culpability for the current economic mess.

Republicans say Mr. Obama, his economic team and the Democrats’ control of Congress for the past two years have proved them all incapable of running the economy.

For his part, the President is determined to remind voters who was on watch when the nation crashed.

Republicans are “betting that between now and November, you’ll come down with a case of amnesia. They think you’ll forget what their agenda did to this country. They think you’ll just believe that they’ve changed, and now they’re asking you for the keys back,’’ Mr. Obama said. “Do you want to give them the keys back? Me neither. And do you know why? Because they don’t know how to drive!”