[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 124 (Wednesday, September 11, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10343-S10344]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 SHOULD WE TROT OUT THE NEW DEAL AGAIN?

 Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, one of the ablest aldermen in the 
city of Chicago, Burton F. Natarus, recently had a commentary in the 
Chicago Tribune in which he calls for a public works program along the 
lines of the WPA. It makes eminent good sense.
  We can learn from history, but we're apparently unwilling to do it.
  The welfare bill that passed is going to cause huge problems in our 
society if we don't come up with something better and do it quickly.
  A WPA type of welfare reform would cost a little more initially, but 
saves huge amounts of money in the long run and be of great assistance 
to impoverished areas, whether rural or urban.
  Right now we are trying to have welfare reform but do it without 
creating jobs for the unskilled and without having day care for their 
children.
  Anything labeled ``welfare reform'' that doesn't provide the jobs and 
doesn't provide day care is not really welfare reform.
  Mr. President, I ask that Alderman Natarus' article be printed in the 
Record.
  The article follows:

               [From the Chicago Tribute, Aug. 22, 1996]

                 Should We Trot Out the New Deal Again?

                         (By Burton F. Natarus)

       On July 24, the Senate approved a comprehensive welfare 
     bill, the most sweeping change since the creation of the New 
     Deal 60 years ago. Federal guarantees of cash assistance for 
     the nation's poorest children have evaporated and states will 
     be given new powers to run welfare on their own. The measure 
     also imposes a five-year lifetime limit on cash assistance 
     payments to any family and requires the head of every family 
     on welfare to work within two years or lose benefits.
       While we laud the new thrust toward the self-sufficiency of 
     our population, and the end of the obsolete aspects of the 
     60-year-old welfare system, we have serious concerns about 
     jobs. Where are they to come from? Where is the new workforce 
     to go? To Bainbridge Island, Wash., to work for Microsoft? To 
     the high-tech Naperville corridor for that chemical 
     engineering position? The welfare reform bill, which 
     President Clinton is expected to sign, presumes there will be 
     jobs available for the workforce. These jobs may or may not 
     exist and we have to face the brutal fact that generations of 
     welfare families have no saleable working skills. Recall the 
     controversial ``workfare'' Comprehensive Employment and 
     Training Act program from the Nixon administration in the 
     flush, moneyed '70s, when Congress tried to create jobs 
     accompanied by teaching and skills

[[Page S10344]]

     training. Limited in scope and a short-term solution to 
     unemployment, it finally ended with the Reagan era and here 
     we are 10 years later with no significant federal jobs 
     program as we throw the poor out on their own.
       With the CETA program, the private sector created low-level 
     and semi-skilled jobs, which concentrated in the food 
     service, truck driving and clerical fields. There were 
     considerable financial incentives for the private sector to 
     participate in CETA. These incentives do not exist today and 
     the private sector may not be willing nor is it able to 
     create entry-level jobs in sufficient numbers.
       In 1929, the Depression commenced its sad and ugly course 
     and by 1933 12 million able-bodied Americans were out of 
     work. No work. No money. The country was, however, fortunate 
     enough to have Franklin Roosevelt as its 32nd president. We 
     know of his long roster of massive relief measures and social 
     programs to cope with the Depression and a country in crisis: 
     farm relief, unemployment insurance, Social Security, fair 
     bankruptcy and foreclosure procedures and numerous federal 
     jobs measures. At the 1932 Democratic National Convention in 
     Chicago, Roosevelt declared, ``I pledge myself to a new deal. 
     . . . This is more than a political campaign; it is a call to 
     arms.''
       What we need is a ``new'' New Deal and a call to arms. Let 
     us recall some of those job-creating public works bills of 
     the Roosevelt administration.
       In March 1933, his recovery plan included the Civilian 
     Conservation Corps, which gave 250,000 young men meals, 
     housing, wages and the necessities of life for their work in 
     the national forests and other government properties.
       There was the Works Progress Administration and in the 
     words of Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.) 10 years ago, it was 
     ``refreshingly sensible.'' The WPA put 8.5 million people to 
     work building bridges, airports, highways and developing 
     programs to foster cultural awareness. The Federal Art 
     Project's works are still seen today in murals at such places 
     as Lane Tech and the Lakeview Post Office. Hundreds of 
     thousands of Chicagoans worked for the WPA during these 
     years, including thousands of laborers, artists and writers 
     who worked for $95 a month. In Illinois, from 1935-38, these 
     new hires built 28 million square feet of sidewalks, 1,895 
     rural bridges, 300,000 public artworks. A recent New York 
     Times Magazine article entitled, ``When Work Disappears'' 
     recounts the staggering national accomplishments of the 
     administration, from playgrounds, athletic fields, viaducts 
     and culverts, to LaGuardia Airport and FDR Drive. This week 
     it has been nationally reported that the cities with the most 
     decrepit crumbling and unsafe bridges in the country are New 
     York and Washington, D.C. In Chicago, we could also use the 
     help of our citizens in repairing old infrastructure.
       The Public Works Administration created jobs and stimulated 
     business between 1933 and 1939. The federal government spent 
     $6 billion on construction of the Washington, D.C. Mall, 
     Hoover Dam, the Lincoln Tunnel and Ft. Knox. This bureau also 
     created jobs geared toward the preservation of public works.
       The creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority put the 
     government in the electric power business, selling 
     electricity in competition with private firms, and giving the 
     government ownership of hydroelectric plants in large rivers. 
     Under the program, Norris Dam was built on the Tennessee 
     River and the Bonneville and Grand Coulee on the Columbia 
     River. These dams employed hundreds of thousands of people 
     who ended up not only supporting themselves and their 
     families but constructing enduring legacies for the country. 
     How many flood plains could use dams right here in Illinois?
       World War II eventually solved the unemployment problem but 
     you can imagine how bereft the country would have been for 
     those 10 years without the PWA, the WPA, the CCC and the TVA. 
     One powerful reason why it makes good economic sense to place 
     people on the federal payroll is that the jobs are taxable 
     and the tax monies revert to the federal government as wages 
     are disbursed. Programs such as the WPA pay for themselves in 
     the long run, which is so much more financially efficient 
     than a dole or handout.
       Furthermore, when the federal worker leaves his public 
     sector job he will be ready, or at least more ready, for 
     private sector employment, having received on-the-job 
     training in a specific field. Incidentally, the jobs would 
     not be ad aeternitum nor for the lifetime of an individual. 
     They would be for a finite period after which time others 
     would be hired and given a chance to learn replicable skills. 
     By creating these government jobs an economic rippling effect 
     inevitably occurs in which private industry is stimulated.
       A federal public jobs program would not carry the stigma of 
     welfare so public jobs must be made available for those who 
     will no longer be on the dole. We owe our citizens this much. 
     This is indeed a call to arms and in this matter we have no 
     choice.
       `The WPA was the most beneficial project in the history of 
     the United States. Bringing it back is long overdue . . . 
     There are plenty of projects now without having to make work. 
     Everything is deteriorating--bridges, buildings, roads, 
     schools, everything.'

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