TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

This is the AFL-CIO’s plan for the economy:

Fortunately, he has a plan to create 4m jobs. It can be summarised in a single word, the same one that Samuel Gompers, one of Mr Trumka’s predecessors, used to describe what his members wanted: “More.”

Washington must spend more on unemployment benefits, on roads, on schools, on green energy projects and on aid to state and local governments. The president’s recent budget proposal was all very well, but it needs at least another $400 billion in “immediate job-creating investments”. Too much attention is paid to the budget deficit, says Mr Trumka, and not enough to the jobs deficit. Funds can be found by squeezing “Wall Street and the super-rich”, who must “pay their fair share…to rebuild the economy that they destroyed.”

Unions spent hundreds of millions of dollars on electing Democrats in 2008, and provided an army of campaign volunteers. They expect something back, and Mr Obama is keen to oblige—up to a point. Union leaders such as Mr Trumka and Andy Stern, the leader of the more moderate Service Employees International Union, are regular guests at the White House. Mr Obama has revoked some Bush-era executive orders that unions hate and issued a few they adore. He has appointed union insiders to top jobs, allowed Congress to add “buy American” provisions to the stimulus bill, risked a trade war with China to please tyre-workers, let other trade deals wither and brazenly favoured unions when bailing out car firms.

That’s their grand idea: pile larger taxes onto companies and the well-off (I wonder what his definition of “super-rich” is), and funnel it directly to unions.

He’s quite honest about what he wants, and eliminating our budget deficit isn’t a part of it. In a time when we’re paying $202 billion per year of interest on our national debt (expected to rise to $700 billion per year in 2019), and Social Security and Medicare grow more unsustainable with each passing day, Trumka’s great plan is to spend almost half a trillion more dollars in 2011.

Besides the sickening class-warfare rhetoric and logic, this is disturbingly stupid. We are at a crossroads here, where we can choose between two paths. The first, and the path that Congress and this administration are heading down, is toward ever-mounting spending and debt, and a failed nation. The second is to significantly cut spending in entitlements and discretionary spending, and reform the tax code so our nation is sustainable.

Unfortunately, the administration isn’t showing any willingness to seriously address this. It isn’t any wonder why this is, though, when people like this have the ear of the president.