I realize that Republicans don’t exactly corner the market on government spending restraint (thanks, W, thanks, Congress!) but hopefully someone on the Hill will resist Barack Obama’s latest big government scheme. He wants to spend $210 billion “creating” jobs.

Democrat Barack Obama said Wednesday that as president he would spend $210 billion to create jobs in construction and environmental industries, as he tried to win over economically struggling voters.

Or buy their votes with someone else’s money. As the title says, he’s an unreconstructed lefty. That’s how they are.

Obama’s investment would be over 10 years as part of two programs. The larger is $150 billion to create 5 million so-called “green collar” jobs to develop more environmentally friendly energy sources.

Sixty-billion dollars would go to a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank to rebuild highways, bridges, airports and other public projects. Obama estimated that could generate nearly 2 million jobs, many of them in the construction industry that’s been hit by the housing crisis.

Airports and roads? The environmental extremists in the Democrat coalition are just going to love that. And by the time they get through taking these construction projects to court, Barack Obama will be a very old man.

The Hillary campaign’s response is typically lame.

Neera Tanden, Hillary Rodham Clinton’s policy director, said Obama was offering ideas Clinton proposed months ago. “Voters may ask themselves that if Senator Obama cannot produce his own ideas on the campaign trail, how will he solve new problems as president?” Tanden said in a memo e-mailed to reporters.

Because spending other people’s money is such an original idea.

I’m becoming bored with Obama. He’s a conventional liberal who happens to be a better salesman than the rest of them, but that doesn’t mean he’ll be any better in office than any other liberal. They all chip away at the free market while they weaken our standing in the world. They’re all infected with the same PC multi-culti claptrap and most of them never met a tax hike or government program that they didn’t like (except the military, which most of them hate and can’t wait to slash). Not interested.

Maybe it was Dean Barnett’s little exposee that has reporters paying more attention to how Obama speaks, but it’s interesting that the reporter thought to include this detail.

He read from a TelePrompTer in an industrial training room, flanked by sparkling new vehicles and a large American flag.

He had to have a prompter even for what sounds like a low-key speech in a small venue? Hm. He has a weakness. He needs a crutch.