If something seems vaguely familiar about the jobs initiatives announced by President Obama today, there’s a reason for that: These are some of the same initiatives that Obama proposed on the campaign trail, but then dropped after taking office.

Take for example today’s proposal for “complete elimination of capital gains taxes on small business investment.” Sounds like a pretty good idea — so good, that he already proposed that on the campaign trail and during the transition. In fact, his transition’s website, Change.gov, still promises that “they will eliminate all capital gains taxes on investments made in small and start-up businesses.” The only problem? President Obama’s budget earlier this year did propose propose eliminating capital gains taxes for small businesses – but not until 2014, after the President’s first term in office is completed. (See page 122 of the budget here.)

Now the White House is trying to make news by re-proposing a proposal that they already made several times and included in the out-years of their budget. As Joe Biden would say, “Folks, you can’t make this up.”

And that’s not the only re-trodden idea in today’s announcement. The President also said it is “worthwhile to create a tax incentive to encourage small businesses to add and keep employees and I’m going to work with Congress to pass one.” As I wrote in POLITICO last spring, that’s an idea that he originally proposed in October 2008 that proved completely unworkable and was quickly dropped after the election. (Politifact also called this proposal one of his broken promises.)

Seriously, if a “per-job tax-cut” was a workable idea in October 2008 and is a workable idea now, why didn’t anybody in the Administration mention (let along propose) it in the intervening 14 months? And, if it’s truely not a workable idea (which Republicans & Democrats agree it isn’t), then why is the President re-proposing it now?

Bottom line: Recycling old ideas under the rubric of “new initiatives” may generate some much-needed headlines about jobs for the President, but it’s not serious policy making.