Legal Commentary

The New New Deal: A New WPA? A New PWA? Both?

By Big Tent Democrat

In the Times today, Nick Taylor argues for the New Deal PWA, Harry Hopkins led model:

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he should look to the structure created for the W.P.A. in 1935 to select the best plans for renovating the country’s outdated infrastructure.

It's an interesting take but not entirely uncontroversial historically. For example, the feud between Harold Ickes, Sr. and Hopkins may have been personal, but it was framed on the basis of policy differences. Here is a a discussion of some of them. It would be interesting to hear more from economists and historians on the relative merits of the Hopkins' WPA and the Ickes' PWA.

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on December 09, 2008 (boomark / email).