The fact that Obama is trying to grab a republican idea and and rebrand it into a primarily taxpayer funded idea like promise zones, tells me that the democrats are running short on ideas.
Just a couple of weeks ago Rand Paul was in Detroit to roll out his free market plan for Detroit and other economically depressed areas to bail themselves out. He called it the Jack Kemp plan on Steroids. His plan calls for cutting business and personal taxes to 5%, cutting payroll and income tax to 2.5%, tax free repatriation and some other things.
Now Obama is out there talking about “Promise zones”. (which I think was a term first used by Herman Cain) The democrats are even calling it a plan like Jack Kemp’s plan but theirs is better because it calls for massive taxpayer funding of schools, infrastructure, and police combined with small tax breaks for businesses that hire people. (Basically give blank checks to cities in trouble)
Not sure what you mean by ‘ideas’
Every word and action Obama takes this year is motivated by the coming midterms, he is looking for ways to get his voters out again in 2014 by demanding stuff that polls well and doesnt turn off independents that conservatives will oppose.
Example:
Last night the Dems were characterizing GOPs opposition to Senate unemployment comp bill as :
‘The GOP killed the unemployment compensation benefits because they believe that the unemployed are too lazy to work, when they (unemployed) are victims of the GREAT RECESSION of 2008’