Most would never have guessed that a Republican candidate would be the first to reintroduce the concept of a Works Progress Administration in a major presidential campaign. But then again, Mike Huckabee–a fierce social conservative with a serious case of liberal financial morality–isn’t your typical presidential candidate.
The WPA was a program introduced by Franklin Roosevelt during his “New Deal” to help pull America out of the depression. Among other things, it was a government agency that hired unemployed laborers to do anything and everything–building bridges, digging ditches, paving roads–and paid them for it. It was the absolute best thing to do after an economic crash, and Huckabee’s own ideas for curbing our current recession are notably similar. In tonight’s debate he said:
“If we are going to spend a $150 billion, I’d like to suggest we add two lanes of highway from Bangor all the way to Miami on I-95. A third of the U.S. population lives within a hundred miles of that. This nation’s infrastructure is falling apart, and if we built those lanes of highway, with American labor, American steel, American concrete, I believe it would do more to stimulate the economy.”
It may be a bit extreme for our mild recession, compared to the Great Depression, but then again it does seem a bit more productive–and “conservative”–than Bush’s current plan of just giving away money.
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