The Chris Moeller Archives

A Newer Deal

Americans are poised to help their fellow citizens in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Now is the time for leadership, and George W. Bush is failing to give it to us. He lied outright to Diane Sawyer Friday morning when he said-- "I don't think anyone anticipated any breach of the levee"-- knowing full well that the New Orleans Time-Piscayne, and the former heads of both FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers had each issued dire warnings about the levee in recent years. His failure to send the military to the scene for five full days after the storm will go down in history in texts that already include the phrase, "bin Laden determined to attack America."
The current head of FEMA, Michael Brown, who didn't know until Thursday that there were 15,000 Katrina victims still in the New Orleans Convention Center, had no experience in disaster relief when the President awarded him with an appointment to the post. The Prez lauded him with a "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job" on Friday.

To best utilize the renewed compassion and energy of the American people, we need a fundamental change in the way that business is conducted in Washington. We need an end to the era of greed that placed a greater emphasis on private wealth than on public investment. Seeing this destructive power of Mother Nature should remind us all how precarious our existence really is, even in a country of such tremendous resources. It's going to take a renewed commitment to community to weather the coming storms. The symbolic beginning of this new era should be the formation of a 21st Century Public Works Administration.

The original PWA was a principal ingredient of President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal in 1933. It was a relief organization designed to make work for the millions of unemployed during the Great Depression, constructing schools, hospitals, highways, bridges, dams, and housing. Today, you can see the positive legacy of the PWA in almost every American community. Three billion dollars in investment in '33 was distributed among 13,000 projects and has undoubtedly saved us hundreds of billions in the decades since. Conservation was a high priority. A vast majority of government buildings-- courthouses, post offices, etc. still stand. Where would our energy situation be today without the hydroelectric power that's been harnessed by the dams over time?

The rebuilding of New Orleans would be the first, high-profile, energy-building project of the new administration, but the failures of the levee and the flood protection system there are only symptomatic of a larger national problem of crumbling infrastructure. Schools, public housing, and medical facilities are disintegrating in our most depressed communities.

A principal project of the new PWA would be the construction of urban commuter rail systems in medium-to-large populated cities that don't already have them-- my home city of Des Moines, Iowa, for example. This public investment- emphasis on investment- would save an enormous amount of money and energy in the coming century as we finally come to grips with the end of the planet's supply of oil. Plants designed to harness wind energy, and other alternative energy sources, would be constructed as well to deal with an energy crisis that has already arrived.

Many critics of the government effort in New Orleans this week believe that the failure falls in the lap of the federal government. They argue that it's a large bureaucracy that worsened the impact of the Hurricane. But, keep in mind, the current administration has made it a matter of policy to weaken these institutions. FEMA was downgraded from a cabinet position to a position under Homeland Security under President Bush. The Army Corps of Engineers, a principal infrastructural agency if ever there was one, has been massively defunded during Bush's consecutive terms. The Corps asked for $105 million in hurricane and flood programs in New Orleans last year, and the White House cut that amount to $40 million.

Bush's disdain for public investment has been evident in other programs as well. He puts oil industry executives in the EPA to weaken that department's power. He puts creationists and program slashers at the helm of the Department of Education. It's all part of a design to weaken public faith towards the effectiveness of a strong federal government-- mismanagement packaged as advertisement for change.

But the fact is, public investment pays over time. What may have been seen as a frivolous infrastructural expense just a week ago, with two wars raging overseas, should now be viewed as a critical national economic priority. We have a ready and willing workforce at our disposal in this nation. Let's harness that power.

This is the foundation of the 21st Century Public Works Administration. or the Moeller Plan, as some are calling it (a sort of Marshall Plan for our own people.) The details still need to be ironed out, as I only first thought of it last night at around 6 o'clock, but it's an investment idea, I believe, that could save us billions of dollars over time, if only Washington could get away from its mindset of short-term solutions and the endless cycle of electioneering. The current administration is already bought and paid for, but something similar to this should be a major part of the Democratic Party's platform and their message to voters beginning in the mid-term elections next year.

posted by CM @ 11:36 AM