BUSINESS groups and Republicans have pummelled Barack Obama of late as a populist demagogue whose policies have failed to stimulate growth while blanketing companies with stifling uncertainty about taxes and regulation. This week Mr Obama unveiled a trio of proposals that look to have been designed less to power up the economy than to parry such attacks.

The boldest proposal would let businesses deduct the full cost of investment against their taxes next year instead of over three or more years. This would encourage them to bring forward their investment plans to 2011. The impact, however, will be muted by low interest rates (which diminish the value of an early tax refund) and the fact that businesses are much more worried about weak demand than their cost of capital. Still, Kevin Hassett, an economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, thinks this could boost investment by 5% to 10%.

Another proposal would make a tax credit for research and development permanent. Mr Obama has called for this before; he now also proposes to make it slightly more generous, raising it from 14 cents to 17 cents per dollar of qualifying R&D. The credit expired last year, as it often does, a victim of Congress' unwillingness to account for its long-term cost. Still, since businesses assume the credit will always be renewed (albeit retroactively), they are unlikely to spend more if proven right.

Mr Obama also renewed his call for a new six-year transport bill, while proposing that $50 billion be spent right away rebuilding 150,000 miles of roads, 4,000 miles of rail and 150 miles of runway. The president wants to depoliticise such spending by funnelling it through a federal “infrastructure bank”, though Clifford Winston of the Brookings Institution fears this would be just as politicised.

Mr Obama faces a delicate marketing job. His approval ratings on the economy have tanked but voters are alarmed about the deficit and convinced, unfairly, that his previous fiscal stimulus didn't help (see chart). In a speech on September 8th in Parma, Ohio Mr Obama avoided the word stimulus and instead labelled the proposals as “additional steps to grow the economy”. They are also designed to minimise the hit to the deficit. The investment tax credit could cost $200 billion in the first two years but just $30 billion over ten years since businesses will have less to deduct later on. Making the R&D credit permanent would cost $100 billion over ten years but this is only $30 billion more than if the credit were simply renewed every year. That, as well as the $50 billion to be spent on infrastructure, would be paid for by eliminating tax breaks for multinationals and oil and gas companies.

These proposals represent more complicating of a tax system already crying out for comprehensive overhaul. And they are unlikely to be approved anyway, given the limited time Congress has before the mid-term elections and the Republicans' reluctance to hand Mr Obama a victory, especially one that raises taxes, even on multinationals.

But politically they have served Mr Obama's purpose, giving him some tax-cutting credentials at a time when Republicans are accusing him of proposing to wreck the economy by letting George Bush's tax cuts for the rich expire in December. Mr Hassett praises the investment tax credit as “quite radically different” from Mr Obama's previous stimulus. Even John Boehner, the Republicans' leader in the House of Representatives, grudgingly conceded, “These aren't necessarily bad proposals.” Reminded that Republicans have put many of these same ideas forward before, Mr Obama's press secretary quipped, “Well, then we ought to be able to get this done pretty quickly.” No one thought he was serious.