Stealing from the Sermon on the Mount to defend his administration’s economic record this Tuesday, President Barack Obama urged Americans to “build our house upon a rock” instead of “the same pile of sand” it had been built on before. In Obama’s hands, the teachings of Jesus become just another way to tell the story of the Three Little Pigs. And a close examination of Obama’s new “five pillars that will grow our economy” shows that Obama is trying to build our new foundation with straw.

The problems begin with the fact that Obama continues to link his pre-existing policy preferences to our current economic problems. The Washington Post editorial board writes: “The agenda focuses on education, renewable energy and health care. … But as his admirable summation of recent history made clear, these pursuits have little to do with the economic crisis, and they are not the key to economic recovery.” Worse, in all “five pillars” Obama cites, his administration already has, or is proposing to, make economic recovery more difficult.

New Rules for Wall Street: Our financial sector is long overdue for regulatory consolidation and simplification, but so far all of Obama’s actions have only increased market uncertainty by extending government’s fumbling hand. Using the Treasury Department’s TARP slush fund, the Obama administration has taken over major firms, set employment practices for entire industries, and laundered money to failing firms.

New Investments in Education: No policy area has better exposed the administration’s hypocrisy education. Despite the administration’s vow to support “what works” in education, mere days after a Department of Education study showed that students in the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program out performed their peers, Education Secretary Arne Duncan took scholarship money away from low-income families. This brazen act makes it clear no real education reform has any hope in this administration.

New Investments in Renewable Energy: President Obama admitted last year that his energy plan would cause electricity prices to “skyrocket.” His cap and trade plan would amount to an economy-killing trillion-dollar energy tax. A new study from Spain shows it will generate a huge net job loss.

New Investment in Health Care: Obama says the key to reducing future deficits is health care reform that contains costs. But his own budget admits his plan will require $634 billion more in new spending just as a down payment. How do you decrease trillion dollar deficits by spending trillions more?

New Savings in Our Federal Budget: The most widely acknowledged untruth in Obama’s budget is the phantom savings he claims by first making spending projections that no one else ever proposed and then cutting them. Remember this is the candidate who in October of last year was still promising the American people a “net spending cut” before enacting a purely deficit spending “economic stimulus” that was larger than the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined.

As Charles Krauthammer points out today, Obama’s “New Foundation” rhetoric is a mirror image of President Jimmy Carter’s 1979 State of the Union speech and his energy and education policies are no different either. And we know how well that presidency worked out.

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