Carol Shea-Porter, proud puppet of Nancy Pelosi, tried desperately to work her mouth all by herself during an interview this week with New Hampshire Public Radio. It proved two crucial facts: 1) Without her puppeteer, Shea-Porter cannot articulate a vision for the future, and 2) she remains clueless about the economy.

NHPR host Brady Carlson began the interview by asking the former 1st District representative in Congress what would be the “essential elements” in the “comprehensive jobs plan” she advocates on the campaign trail.

“Number one, I think that we have to address our problem with infrastructure,” she said. According to Carol Shea-Porter, the biggest factor depressing job growth in America is that we have “dangerous bridges... our roads are in rough shape, our trains are in rough shape....”

Also at the top of her to-do list: raise taxes. She went on and on and on about the government’s lack of “revenue.” She said “there needs to be revenue coming into this country” and “You won’t have the growth that this country needs if this country doesn’t have enough revenue” and “We’ve got to get more revenue here because revenue will provide that growth we’re talking about.” According to Shea-Porter, higher taxes are a necessary precondition to economic growth.

As in the past, Shea-Porter has no ideas of her own. Whatever the party leadership tells her to say, she says. This year’s talking points are focused on “fairness,” “infrastructure” and “revenue,” and those are the words Shea-Porter loyally repeats. The NHPR interview (which you can listen to at http://www.nhpr.org/post/jobs-and-economy-carol-shea-porter) was so great because Shea-Porter had to ad-lib for more than 18 minutes. Given that much time and no script, she awkwardly spouted talking points that she clearly did not even fully understand.

There are many actions that would help the U.S. economy far more than raising taxes and buying trains. One would be to make sure Carol Shea-Poter does not get elected to Congress ever again.