We noted yesterday that White House aides were already backtracking on President Barack Obama’s promise that his $50 billion infrastructure plan “will not only create jobs immediately, it’s also going to make our economy hum over the long haul.” Specifically a “senior administration official” told Politico: “This is not an … immediate jobs plan.”

Well The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank apparently has been talking to the same “senior administration official.” Here is how he reports the exchange between reporters and the Obama White House:

Q. What is your estimate of how many jobs would be created?

A. We don’t have a jobs estimate for that.

Q. What are you thinking in terms of timing?

A. I don’t want to make a prediction about timing.

Q. So just your best-case scenario . . . when do we start to see jobs created as a result of all this?

A. In 2011.

Q. And are we talking January 2011 or December 2011?

A. Over the course of 2011.

Milbank then adds: “Obama himself must not have been briefed, because he told the crowd in Milwaukee that the plan would ‘create jobs immediately.'”

The President is scheduled to give another speech outlining another economic stimulus today at 2 PM. We’ll let you know if he gets his facts straight.

Heritage analyst Ron Utt has written extensively on the false hope of infrastructure spending job creation:

Infrastructure Bank Proposals Rely on Backdoor Deficit Spending
Learning from Japan: Infrastructure Spending Won’t Boost the Economy
More Transportation Spending: False Promises of Prosperity and Job Creation