Jason Scott Smith: A New Deal, Part II?
[Jason Scott Smith is a history professor at Cornell University and the author of the upcoming book Building New Deal Liberalism: The Political Economy of Public Works, 1933-1956.]
...Before the details of the president's plan emerge, now seems a promising moment to take a step back and recall what the New Deal did.
Roosevelt's New Deal marked an unprecedented use of federal authority in response to the Great Depression. In 1933, nearly a quarter of the American workforce was out of a job. But though today we often think of the New Deal's remaining legacies as Social Security, federal bank deposit insurance or the Securities and Exchange Commission, this partial list ignores what the New Deal was really about.
The central enterprise of the New Deal was its public works programs. Through Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes' Public Works Administration (PWA) and Harry Hopkins' Works Progress Administration (WPA), the federal government spent huge sums of money in all but three of the nation's 3,071 counties.
The WPA's 1935 appropriation of $4.88 billion was by itself the equivalent of 132% of federal revenue, or about 6.7% of the nation's gross domestic product, in that year. These public works agencies put people to work, constructing such projects as roads, sewers, hydroelectric dams and hundreds of airports. Believing in socially useful infrastructure, these New Dealers built in order to improve the nation and to invest in the future. For example, the New Deal built schools in almost half of the nation's counties. These programs leveraged the abilities of an uncommonly smart set of public servants.
Hopkins, Ickes and their subordinates were skilled public administrators, blessed with a talent for tapping the legal and engineering expertise they needed when facing a national emergency. Furthermore, these New Dealers were not afraid of capitalism: Ickes' PWA, for instance, built its projects by accepting bids from such private contractors as Bechtel and Brown & Root (today a subsidiary of Halliburton)....
[The author goes on to point out that the New Deal did not end the unemployment of the Great Depression--World War II did. But the New Deal did lead to the rebuilding of America's infrastructure.]
But if public works construction was the core of the New Deal, how might this history help us think about the present?
We can hazard three analogies:
•First, it's worth noting how hard Roosevelt's New Dealers worked to strike the right balance between public administration and private capitalism. At the same time, they were not afraid to deploy their resources and spend on a huge scale.
•Second, the success of the New Deal depended to a large degree on its ability to elicit the tangible support of state and local governments. Like their predecessors, post-Katrina planners will need to arrive at an effective mix of public and private action.
•Finally, in light of FEMA head Mike Brown's resignation and the seeming inability of the federal government to combat a predicted national disaster, it might be useful to underscore just how vital it can be to employ talented public servants such as Ickes and Hopkins.
Read entire article at USA Today
...Before the details of the president's plan emerge, now seems a promising moment to take a step back and recall what the New Deal did.
Roosevelt's New Deal marked an unprecedented use of federal authority in response to the Great Depression. In 1933, nearly a quarter of the American workforce was out of a job. But though today we often think of the New Deal's remaining legacies as Social Security, federal bank deposit insurance or the Securities and Exchange Commission, this partial list ignores what the New Deal was really about.
The central enterprise of the New Deal was its public works programs. Through Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes' Public Works Administration (PWA) and Harry Hopkins' Works Progress Administration (WPA), the federal government spent huge sums of money in all but three of the nation's 3,071 counties.
The WPA's 1935 appropriation of $4.88 billion was by itself the equivalent of 132% of federal revenue, or about 6.7% of the nation's gross domestic product, in that year. These public works agencies put people to work, constructing such projects as roads, sewers, hydroelectric dams and hundreds of airports. Believing in socially useful infrastructure, these New Dealers built in order to improve the nation and to invest in the future. For example, the New Deal built schools in almost half of the nation's counties. These programs leveraged the abilities of an uncommonly smart set of public servants.
Hopkins, Ickes and their subordinates were skilled public administrators, blessed with a talent for tapping the legal and engineering expertise they needed when facing a national emergency. Furthermore, these New Dealers were not afraid of capitalism: Ickes' PWA, for instance, built its projects by accepting bids from such private contractors as Bechtel and Brown & Root (today a subsidiary of Halliburton)....
[The author goes on to point out that the New Deal did not end the unemployment of the Great Depression--World War II did. But the New Deal did lead to the rebuilding of America's infrastructure.]
But if public works construction was the core of the New Deal, how might this history help us think about the present?
We can hazard three analogies:
•First, it's worth noting how hard Roosevelt's New Dealers worked to strike the right balance between public administration and private capitalism. At the same time, they were not afraid to deploy their resources and spend on a huge scale.
•Second, the success of the New Deal depended to a large degree on its ability to elicit the tangible support of state and local governments. Like their predecessors, post-Katrina planners will need to arrive at an effective mix of public and private action.
•Finally, in light of FEMA head Mike Brown's resignation and the seeming inability of the federal government to combat a predicted national disaster, it might be useful to underscore just how vital it can be to employ talented public servants such as Ickes and Hopkins.