"But if the additional goal is to spur economic growth, this tax 'jolt' will have little impact," said Heritage Foundation economist Stuart Butler in a recent study.

"Short-term tax holidays, or temporary spending jolts, will not rekindle economic growth; only long-term reductions in marginal tax rates on capital and work will accomplish that goal," Butler said.

"Long-term tax-rate reductions -- as opposed to Obama's short-term jolts -- are needed because the important economic decisions that will trigger a real recovery depend on more investment in new factories and new equipment," he argued.

He's right. Investors will risk their capital when they know they can depend on the after-tax return on their investment. This requires long-term tax-rate reductions, "not a temporary shot in the arm" that will be gone in a matter of months, Butler said.

All of this is just basic common sense that seems lost to the Obama team's apparent economic nostalgia for Keynesian New Deal pump-priming that FDR tried in the 1930s without much success. By the end of that decade, unemployment was averaging 17 percent and for all practical purposes we were still in a depression.

America runs on capital and that's the missing ingredient in the president-elect's economic recovery plan. The former neighborhood activist believes that if you spend enough taxpayer money rebuilding roads, bridges and run-down schools and buildings, the temp jobs being created will get the economy going again. But it didn't work in the 1930s, it didn't work in the 1990s in Japan, and it won't work now.

Earlier this year, Republicans briefly had Obama on the defensive over his anti-oil exploration energy policy with the campaign war cry, "Drill, baby, drill."

Trillions of dollars in private capital are locked away in T-bills and other holding accounts that need to be put to work expanding businesses and creating real jobs. Permanently cutting tax rates and eliminating the fed's double-taxation capital-gains rate will unlock this capital.

The GOP's recovery war cry next year should be, "Invest, baby, invest."