Obama Likes Temporary Infrastructure Jobs, Except When He Doesn't

President Obama is out for the umpteenth time stressing the need for government to goose the economy, which wouldn’t need goosing had any of his many previous gooses (or is it geese?) worked.

And one of his favorite proposals is more federal funding for infrastructure construction, which comes with a $50 billion price tag.

Well, here’s an infrastructure idea that wouldn’t cost the federal government a dime, which, ironically, with this administration might actually hurt its chances: approve the Keystone XL pipeline.

The Keystone XL is clearly an infrastructure project, funded by the private sector, which moves U.S. oil to U.S. refineries. That’s right—U.S. oil. While most of the policy discussion has focused on moving heavier Canadian oil sands to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast, the XL passes through Montana so that the state has a way to transport its newly extracted light crude oil from the Williston Basin region to refineries.

And if the president were to approve the pipeline, it would create thousands of high-paying jobs almost immediately.

Environmentalists have pooh-poohed claims that the Keystone XL will create thousands of jobs, arguing that most of those jobs would be temporary. There is some truth to that claim. Once the pipeline has been completed in two or three years, most of those working on it—from those digging the trenches to transporting and laying the pipeline to the pipefitters and others assembling it, and all the support staff in between—will move on to other projects.

But wait, isn’t that true of virtually any infrastructure construction job, like the ones the Obama is proposing?

Once a road is completed, the various road crews move on to other roads. Once a bridge is completed, the vast majority of those construction crews move on to other bridge-building jobs.

So why are Obama’s temporary, infrastructure jobs “good jobs” that stimulate the economy, while the Keystone XL’s infrastructure jobs are “temporary” and therefore bad jobs that don’t help the economy?

President Obama and his environmental friends can’t have it both ways: Either infrastructure jobs are good for the economy or they aren’t. If they are, then the president needs to approve the XL immediately and let the country get back to work.