THE plan by Barack Obama to attack unemployment by putting people to work on roads, bridges, schools and new energy projects sounds like a version of the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration. If Franklin D. Roosevelt is Mr. Obama’s model, and if the president-elect wants to avoid the disorganized hodgepodge that the financial bailout seems to be so far, then he should look to the structure created for the W.P.A. in 1935 to select the best plans for renovating the country’s outdated infrastructure.
Two years into his first term, Roosevelt decided that he could no longer fight joblessness with piecemeal and temporary programs. Putting people to work was Roosevelt’s first goal, but he also envisioned using a big spending program — $4.8 billion, or more than $76 billion today — to rebuild America. He created a three-step process for reviewing how the money would be spent.
Cities and states were begging for money to hire jobless citizens to build public works. Today’s collapsed bridges, urban gridlock and clogged air transport system had their parallels in the 1930s in mud tracks, cities unprepared for the automobile, and a dearth of airports. Many rural areas had no running water or electricity. Schools, hospitals, courthouses, city halls, recreation centers, water treatment plants — all stood high on the wish lists of local and state governments. At the same time, federal agencies wanted to build armories and dams and refurbish military bases with inexpensive labor.
These local governments and federal agencies deluged the W.P.A. with project applications, which were screened for feasibility and the adequacy of supporting documents like blueprints, cost estimates and planning studies.
Those that survived passed on to the second step in the process, a huge advisory committee that met at least once a week. Its members included government officials and representatives of farm groups, labor, business and the United States Conference of Mayors. Their job was to identify redundancy among the applications and to provide money to the best and most cost-effective projects.
Step 3 was a division that kept track of projects through their completion.
Under the leadership of Harry Hopkins, the W.P.A. took a mandate to do small projects and literally remade America. The W.P.A.’s workers, who numbered around 3.5 million at their peak, gave the country a new infrastructure that kept pace with emerging commerce and technology. At the same time their paychecks lubricated the economy.
Mr. Obama has similar goals in mind. His plan to hire Americans for work like, as he put it last month, “rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges, modernizing schools that are failing our children and building wind farms and solar panels, fuel-efficient cars and the alternative energy technologies that can free us from our dependence on foreign oil” will benefit the economy and build tangible public works at the same time.
The challenge for Mr. Obama, as it was for Roosevelt, will be to do the job efficiently, to avoid a jumble of projects that help cities and states but don’t improve the national picture. It’s not enough for the president and the Congress to just spend money. Local governments will be scrambling for dollars and showering plans on Washington.
Well-coordinated screening can make sure that the projects that go forward are the right ones. Chris Dodd, the Democratic senator from Connecticut, wants to create a national infrastructure bank with a bipartisan board of directors, to be run by an executive appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. That structure resembles the one that guided Roosevelt’s W.P.A. Mr. Obama could do a lot worse than looking back as he moves the country forward.
Nick Taylor is the author of “American-Made: The Enduring Legacy of the W.P.A.”http://my.barackobama.com/page/dashboard/public/gGWdjc
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