Why not a WPA type program?

..To its conservative critics, the WPA was just another big government boondoggle. But to its supporters,
this federal jobs initiative brought a modest weekly income and self-respect to millions of out-of-work
Americans who were the chief victims of the Great Depression.

WPA dollars began to reach Minnesota in late 1935, five months after the authorizing legislation was
approved in Washington. During the program's first month, in September of that year, slightly more than
4,000 Minnesotans were put to work on public improvement projects at a scattering of job sites throughout
the state. Three months later, that number had shot up to more than 56,000.

Its labor-intensive improvements at park and parkway sites provided a good fit for the federal program,
with its emphasis on small-scale construction projects that could be implemented quickly and employ large
numbers of the unskilled and semi-skilled men. Seventy five years later, many of these improvements are
still in place at sites such as Minnehaha Park, Theodore Wirth Park and Victory Memorial Drive.

By 1942, the WPA in Minneapolis had paved 60 miles of streets, curbs and gutters; installed 64,000
traffic signs; built 313,000 feet of sewers; and reconditioned 113 public schools. In addition to these
visible public-works projects, the federal program also funded indoor jobs for white-collar men and women,
who were put to work indexing newspaper articles for the local libraries, organizing the Health
Department's birth records and updating the city assessor's plat maps. More jobs were provided through
the Federal One project, which funded the arts. This federal initiative supported outdoor theater
performances at city parks, band concerts at Lake Harriet and an extensive educational program at the
Minneapolis Art Center.

Now, in 2009, as this country faces its most severe economic crisis since the Great Depression, shovels
are being rediscovered. As plans move forward in Washington for a massive economic stimulus, policymakers
are calling for "shovel-ready" projects that can put people to work quickly. During its era, the WPA
did not end the Depression. But it provided jobs when there were few available in the private economy,
it enhanced public services, and it helped ease the hardships faced by millions of out-of-work Americans.
Today, that earlier federal stimulus provides a model that could well be replicated as this country
struggles to halt its current economic meltdown.