Obama Needs an FDR-Style Public Works Program

Henry Paulson has changed his mind three times about how he intends to give away $700 billion worth of taxpayer money. However, one thing is clear about Paulson's bailout mentality, and that is that he has no common ground with most of the people who are coughing up the money to save American capitalism.

By the time Paulson left Goldman-Sachs, he had raked in more than $350 million in compensation. He was paid that money, I suppose, for exposing Goldman-Sachs to $25 billion in toxic trash loans. Paulson today has a net worth of around $700 million. No failure goes unrewarded on Wall Street.

There is a fraternity-like mentality that exists among corporate CEOs who live in the rarefied air of multimillion dollar bonuses. There is an illusory standard of what "moral" or "legitimate" actually means in decision making for that elite crowd. It is that adjustable scale of decency and morality that has bankrupted America. For two more months, Paulson is the gatekeeper for whether bottom-feeders like Hank Greenberg from AIG or Frank Raines from Freddy Mac get a free pass to squander your taxpayer money the same way they squandered billions of dollars of their shareholders' money. It is becoming clearer every day that Big Government is not the nitwit entity Americans can no longer trust. It is the Wall Street-Paulson crowd that has earned that label.

One of Obama's first acts as President should be to change the corporate greed culture that the Bush crowd has built in the last eight years. One way to do that is outrageously simple; If taxpayers bail out a company like AIG, then government helps manage AIG. The alternative is to let the corporate failures fail and then rebuild America by moving those billions into the hands of Americans who will create new roads, airports, and schools.

In 1932, Franklin Roosevelt saved America not by giving money to the corrupt fraternity of robber barons who created the Great Depression. Instead, he moved money onto Main Street. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) moved America out of the robber-baron dark years by building roads, bridges, schools, levees and parks. Again in 1962, the Accelerated Public Works Act invested money into public infrastructure that in turn saved a failing economy and created sustainable jobs for taxpayers.

Conservatives love to object when a single mother of four gets a welfare check, but you can bet that money is spent in grocery stores where jobs are created. FDR understood that the WPA moved money the same way.

For example, when government pays money to rebuild an energy grid that can move energy from wind farms in California to homes in New York, the dollars that are spent create job opportunities in areas of construction, technology, manufacturing and sales. FDR was accused of being a socialist for doing exactly what Obama needs to do today. When Obama turns his back on Wall Street for a while and spends taxpayer money on Main Street, conservatives will label him the same way they labeled FDR. But America today has too much at stake for Obama to worry at all about dull-brained name-calling.

Comments

[drkazmd65]

How did socialism get such a bad name? Management of Capitalist excesses can only be made by imposing regulations on Capitalism that define the limits of what Capitalism can do, redisributing some of the wealth created by Capitalism back to the state and the people that work to create that wealth and the infrastructre, education, health-care, and safety net that allow Capitalism to work in the long term.

Must the be same group of Republican putzes that worked so hard to give the term "Liberal" such a bad name. Idiots one and all.

[zizyphus]

That is exactly what we need, a WPA with a green emphasis this time. If Obama can do this, we may have a chance. If the corporations retain their stranglehold over the federal government we are doomed. We need to create a new government that puts people's needs above those of corporations.

[ponderingmuch]

"In 1932, Franklin Roosevelt saved America not by giving money to the corrupt fraternity of robber barons who created the Great Depression. Instead, he moved money onto Main Street. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) moved America out of the robber-baron dark years by building roads, bridges, schools, levees and parks. Again in 1962, the Accelerated Public Works Act invested money into public infrastructure that in turn saved a failing economy and created sustainable jobs for taxpayers."

That is the crux.

So how can we lobby for that? Got links? Got ideas?

I am so wanting to fight for that, but I do not know how, on practical levels. Educate me and others like me.

[DRaymond]

And to double up on that there are huge infrastructure needs out there in repairing existing infrastructure (collapsing bridges, anyone?) and in new infratructure (high speed rail so that people and overnight freight can be moved with less energy and reduced road congestion).

[DuganS1]

There isn't a lack of infrastructure for moving freight. Regarding city to city high speed rail, I'd probably use it, but we already have Amtrak around and that's been a big failure for decades.

[SangZe]

Thank you, Mr. Papantonio. You are right. We need a program like the WPA. But we need more than that. We also need a domestic Peace Corps, a nationwide concerted effort to deal with our problems with the same enthusiasm and excitement that led so many of us in the Sixties to go abroad to help others. It can happen. The election of Obama tells us this.

[Henry]

The problem is that noboy lives in Main Street anymore. If there is an energy grid the engineers will come from India and the workers will be illegals from Central or South America. Kids whose parents came from Main Street will be at the club working on their golf swing or on vacation getting a tune that works. We live in the age of entitlement and we produce a myriad of self centered punks.

[BBackSoon]

That is not entirely true. There are plenty of blue collar types that would love a good paying job doing construction; it does not have to be immigrants.

Also we do have plenty of good schools turning out engineers. Maybe if we gave them a real chance. I don"t completely understand the reasoning but I work in IT for a major manufacturing company. We ONLY use Indian Contractors to maintain our Oracle systems. Sure we have some amount of US employees working on these systems but a lot of it is done either off shore or by H1b contractors. Perhaps instead of using Indian kids right out of school we could use US kids right out of school? I know crazy talk.