What Obama should have done in 2009

[Indy Texas]

1. Should have had one really big stimulus instead of repeatedly asking Congress for smaller ones.

2. The Waxman-Markey climate change bill was a waste of political capital and it unnecessarily alienated people. A legitimate reason many working class people dislike Obama is because he has pushed policies that adversely impact their livelihoods (coal mining, oil and gas drilling, etc). If I could tell the president one thing, it would be that "traditional" energy development is a relatively easy way to create jobs that do not require a college education. That's something you can't say as much about renewables (solar panels get made in largely automated factories; wind turbines aren't very labor intensive once they're installed; green energy research and consulting creates jobs for engineers, scientists and MBAs, not so much for former coal miners and roughnecks).
The energy efficiency initiatives were ineffective. People weren't going to spend thousands on Energy Star appliances and double-paned windows in the middle of a recession, even if they got a tax credit.

3. Stimulus money should have gone almost exclusively towards education (in the form of grants to states that were often facing budget shortfalls) and infrastructure (in the form of repairing and refurbishing federal roads and bridges, and in the form of upgrading and expanding fiber optic networks for high-speed Internet).