I first met Marcy Kaptur in 1982 when she was a long shot Democrat running for a House seat in northern Ohio. As I recall, my story bet that she would win. Now Kaptur, who is from Toledo, is the longest serving woman in the House and named by her colleagues as one of the most valuable. She is also tilting at another windmill.
Because she's a quintessential liberal Democrat, with a moderate touch (she's opposed to abortion) and 26 years of successful politics, you'd think that President Obama, who just got finished campaigning in depressed Ohio, would pay attention to her. But she's among the progressive Democrats cursed by Rahm Emanuel as "f***ing retarded" and ignored by the rest of the White House honchos, because they challenged Obama's vain reach for the center and the mirage of Republican support.
Kaptur, who has been a Democratic activist since age 14, has deep roots in blue-collar America, which is where this administration needs help. She is the daughter of Polish-American grocers and still lives in her family home. As a member of the Budget Committee and House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, she helped lead the grilling of the financial geniuses, including Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, who helped topple the economy then rewarded the banks for their generosity.
She is also on the defense Appropriations subcommittee. Among her accomplishments was the success of legislation, after a 17-year battle with too many bureaucracies, for the creation of the vast World War II memorial on the Washington Mall, which she helped dedicate in 2004. The idea for the memorial, which is a top tourist attraction, came from a constituent, Roger Durbin, a letter carrier, who wondered why there were Korean and Vietnam memorials but none for America's greatest conflict.
A bit of a throwback to the New Deal, she has pressed the White House and Congress to resurrect the very effective Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial banking from investment banking. But it was repealed in 1999 by some of the same people who are now top White House economic advisers. And she says the new financial services regulations they helped craft are so full of White House compromises, few Americans understand it, although the bankers seem to like it.
Now, once again, Kaptur finds herself backing a legislative long shot that makes sense to many economists, but not the president's economic advisers who are stuck fast in the mud of a jobless recession and have no ideas about how to escape. She may be whistling in the dark, but she introduced last December, HR 4318, which would "authorize the president to reestablish the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) as a means of providing gainful employment to the unemployed and underemployed citizens... through the performance of useful public work..." She calls it the 21st century version of the CCC, one of the New Deal's most politically popular jobs programs.
One of Kaptur's aides called my attention to her bill, which echoes the legislation proposed by Franklin D. Roosevelt in his first month as president in March, 1933. As the Great Depression wore on, the CCC put three million young men to work, planting trees, improving the national parks, building state parks, erecting fire towers, improving roads and dams. The CCC's genius is that it concentrated on jobless young men, 18 to 16, thousands of whom wandered the land as hoboes. And much of their modest earnings was sent home. Kaptur's bill, of course, would include women and there are no age limitations.
With more than 15 million Americans -- including more than 10 percent of Ohioans -- out of work, the legislation says it is designed "to relieve the acute condition of widespread distress and unemployment existing in the U.S. and to provide for the restoration of depleted natural resources... and the advancement of an orderly program of useful public works. "The work to be done includes forestation of public lands, the prevention of forest fires, floods and soil erosion, pest control, construction, maintenance and repair of roads and trails, overseen by the Interior Department."
President Obama's first stimulus proposal, which was watered down, and another which was just announced, is running into the Republican "no." But although it was meant to create public works jobs, the money did not go directly to hire workers, but to cities, counties and contractors and have made scarcely a dent in the jobless rate. The CCC, like the New Deal's Works Progress Administration, would hire and pay workers directly for their work as employees of the federal government.
Kaptur's legislation asks for $16 billion for each of the next four years to finance the CCC. In a letter appealing to colleagues to co-sponsor her legislation (so far seven house members have signed on), Kaptur suggested that the National Guard and other federal and state agencies could help manage the corps. "We again have the opportunity to make as grand a contribution as President Roosevelt," she said.
There is little doubt Republicans will resist the legislation, but Obama could, like Roosevelt, put his power behind it, using labor unions and progressive groups to embarrass Republicans who claim they want to see progress on job creation. But I doubt the White House knows about the legislation or cares. Obama claims he admires the New Deal, but so far he has not come close to employing its solutions, despite appeals from the best economic minds in the country-including Nobelists Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman.
In a New York Times op-ed entitled, "How To End The Great Recession," former Labor Secretary Robert Reich noted that "the Great Depression and its aftermath demonstrate that there is only one way back to full recovery-though more widely shared prosperity... New Deal measures, Social Security... unemployment insurance... the minimum wage... the GI Bill... created rapid growth and more jobs." Even more conservative economists have called for New Deal style job creation measures.
But if Obama, mired in conventional no-win proposals, does not respond, it would not be the first time Kaptur has been disappointed in her president. In an interview with Guernica Magazine, she blasted Obama's economic advisers, specifically Lawrence Summers, who helped kill Glass-Steagall, and Geithner: "Anyone who's had their fingers on any of the financial damage that's been done should not be allowed to serve in the federal government... That revolving door should be slammed shut How can you have the architects of the disaster in charge of the remediation?"
Asked about Obama's record on the economy, she said, "It's not G.D.P. it's J-O-B. That means we need jobs. " She was asked, "What grade you would give him?" She replied, "The largest room is room for improvement. In my region, he wouldn't be passing. He's got the wrong economic advisers. But they seem to take care of Wall Street just fine." Perhaps that's why he's facing midterm losses; Roosevelt gained House and Senate seats in 1934.
Write to saulfriedman@comcast.net Friedman also writes for www.timegoesby.net