There was a phenomenon that emerged (or maybe it didn't, maybe this speaks more about my age) in the Blair years in the UK, where there would be loud, repeated announcements of massive amounts of cash for various projects. How did they afford such investments? Oh they didn't. They simply repeatedly announced the same spending. 0 money, lots of good headlines. I think this peaked a few years back, where it turned out the promised number of "new" nurses in the NHS actually included the number of nurses who they had expected to quit but thought would no longer quit.

This headline sounds very much like that.