Let's really see how "bad" New Deal failed, and compare what FDR did in 1933 to combat the worst economic crisis in our nation's history to what has been done since 2006 by both Bush and Obama to combat this current crisis.
Exhibit A:
In November of 1933, FDR signed into being the Civil Works Administration (at the same time as he signed into being the Civilian Conservation Corps, or CCC). This agency had a one year budget of $1 billion dollars (equivalent to $16 billion in today's money), or roughly one third of all the moneys budgeted for public works projects. It was geared to put unemployed Americans to work, immediately, for the Federal government as opposed to what the PWA (Public Works Administration, which had the other two thirds of the annual public works budget moneys) doing by pumping money into the public sector via government contractors like GM, Ford, IBM, etc. (much like the Bush/Obama stimulus of today)
In its first four months of operations, the CWA had put to work more than 4 million Americans, which is almost exactly how many people the stimulus programs of both Obama and Bush have managed to put to work in the last four years. CWA cost (in adjusted dollars) only $16 billion, while the bill for stimulus since 2006 has topped $1.1 trillion dollars... that's 12 times as long a period of time, and more than a thousand times more money.
Over the course of the 4 months it operated (it was ENDED... as in "does not exist anymore"... in March of 1934), it saw the laying of 12 million feet of sewer pipe, the construction or improvements to 255,000 miles of roads, 170,000 miles of railroad and trestles, the building of 40,000 schools, nearly 1000 airports, 1100 bridges, and 750 miles of new tunnels. 80% of the cost associated with CWA was in PAYROLL, and 18% was in equipment... and only 2% went to administration costs. That means that $800 million in UN-adjusted dollars (or $12.8 billion in today's dollars) got pumped into the pockets of previously unemployed Americans over the course of only five months... THAT equals $200 per employee (when the average wage was only $1,300 per year), and look at what was accomplished! Could the same have been done by following the age-old method of contracts and bids?
CWA is today called a "failure" by pundits who use its short life and huge size (four million employees is a lot) as their yardstick... but when one considers that even such "conservative" giants of the New Deal era as Alf Landon (who was FDR's greatest rival for the White House), who was then Governor of Kansas, called CWA a success when he wrote to FDR and said in Feb of 1934: "This civil-works program is one of the soundest, most constructive policies of your administration and I cannot urge too strongly its continuance."
CWA was ended because it was never intended to be anything but a temporary measure against ballooning unemployment numbers... not because it wasn't working or cost too much, although many at the time balked at the $1 billion price tag (ironically enough... one of its biggest critics was Al Smith, who was himself a New Deal proponent). This program put 4 million men to work for five months, earning them a fair wage through a tough winter when most hadn't worked a real job in three years... and the improvements to the nation are still visible today. Is THIS program a failure in light of what has been spent by the government in the years since? Is any ONE billion of the $787 billion spent by Bush in 2008 going to give us even 1/10th the results that CWA did in four months of 1934?
I don't think so...
Exhibit A:
In November of 1933, FDR signed into being the Civil Works Administration (at the same time as he signed into being the Civilian Conservation Corps, or CCC). This agency had a one year budget of $1 billion dollars (equivalent to $16 billion in today's money), or roughly one third of all the moneys budgeted for public works projects. It was geared to put unemployed Americans to work, immediately, for the Federal government as opposed to what the PWA (Public Works Administration, which had the other two thirds of the annual public works budget moneys) doing by pumping money into the public sector via government contractors like GM, Ford, IBM, etc. (much like the Bush/Obama stimulus of today)
In its first four months of operations, the CWA had put to work more than 4 million Americans, which is almost exactly how many people the stimulus programs of both Obama and Bush have managed to put to work in the last four years. CWA cost (in adjusted dollars) only $16 billion, while the bill for stimulus since 2006 has topped $1.1 trillion dollars... that's 12 times as long a period of time, and more than a thousand times more money.
Over the course of the 4 months it operated (it was ENDED... as in "does not exist anymore"... in March of 1934), it saw the laying of 12 million feet of sewer pipe, the construction or improvements to 255,000 miles of roads, 170,000 miles of railroad and trestles, the building of 40,000 schools, nearly 1000 airports, 1100 bridges, and 750 miles of new tunnels. 80% of the cost associated with CWA was in PAYROLL, and 18% was in equipment... and only 2% went to administration costs. That means that $800 million in UN-adjusted dollars (or $12.8 billion in today's dollars) got pumped into the pockets of previously unemployed Americans over the course of only five months... THAT equals $200 per employee (when the average wage was only $1,300 per year), and look at what was accomplished! Could the same have been done by following the age-old method of contracts and bids?
CWA is today called a "failure" by pundits who use its short life and huge size (four million employees is a lot) as their yardstick... but when one considers that even such "conservative" giants of the New Deal era as Alf Landon (who was FDR's greatest rival for the White House), who was then Governor of Kansas, called CWA a success when he wrote to FDR and said in Feb of 1934: "This civil-works program is one of the soundest, most constructive policies of your administration and I cannot urge too strongly its continuance."
CWA was ended because it was never intended to be anything but a temporary measure against ballooning unemployment numbers... not because it wasn't working or cost too much, although many at the time balked at the $1 billion price tag (ironically enough... one of its biggest critics was Al Smith, who was himself a New Deal proponent). This program put 4 million men to work for five months, earning them a fair wage through a tough winter when most hadn't worked a real job in three years... and the improvements to the nation are still visible today. Is THIS program a failure in light of what has been spent by the government in the years since? Is any ONE billion of the $787 billion spent by Bush in 2008 going to give us even 1/10th the results that CWA did in four months of 1934?
I don't think so...
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