Thread by @opinion

On Labor Day, 7.5 million Americans lost their federal unemployment benefits, and another 3 million unemployed lost the $300 bonus that had been in place since March.

That’s a lot of people with no immediate way to support themselves and their families trib.al/pK04k9j

What would Franklin Roosevelt — who put America to work during the Great Depression — make of the way Washington has responded to this economic crisis? twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1…

The New Deal’s attack on the Great Depression had four main components:

💵Temporary direct relief for the impoverished
🔐A stronger social safety net
🇺🇸An expanded regulatory state
💼Jobs for the legions of unemployed
trib.al/pK04k9j

“Our greatest primary task is to put people to work,” FDR said in his inaugural address.

4 weeks later, men aged 18-25 went to plant trees, build reservoirs and improve flood control.

They were paid $30/month but received $5; the rest was sent home trib.al/pK04k9j

By August 1933, 300,000 young men and veterans were working for the CCC.

By winter, more than 4 million more were repairing streets, building dams and constructing schools, playgrounds, pools, post offices and other public facilities trib.al/pK04k9j

Since even before President Joe Biden took office, Democrats have been likening him to FDR: a president with a chance to use an economic crisis to redefine the limits of government and transform the country trib.al/pK04k9j

Biden’s most significant domestic policy accomplishments concern only the first of the New Deal’s four parts — direct relief:

💰2nd stimulus check
🥫30% increase in average monthly food stamps
👨‍👧‍👦Temporary expanded tax credit for families with children trib.al/pK04k9j

The $3.5 trillion spending bill takes aim at two of the other New Deal components:

✅Strengthening the safety net
✅Expanding gov't role in economy

It includes funding for childcare, pre-K, family leave, health care, housing and a host of other things trib.al/pK04k9j

These are worthy initiatives. But what about jobs for the unemployed?

The $550 billion in new infrastructure funding will create construction jobs. But these jobs will largely be for career professionals, not the general population of unemployed Americans trib.al/pK04k9j

For the most part, the jobs will not materialize until 2024 and 2025.

Over those two years, the bill is expected to create about 2.5 million jobs, a far cry from New Deal numbers, when the country’s population was two-thirds smaller trib.al/pK04k9j

Today, about 8 million people are out of work.

Unemployment has fallen from last year’s highs, but the nation’s two largest cities, New York and Los Angeles, both have rates above 10%. Chicago and Philadelphia are at or higher than 8% trib.al/pK04k9j

It’s true that Biden’s proposal for Civilian Climate Corps — an echo of Roosevelt’s CCC — is included in the Democrats’ $3.5 trillion spending plan.

Even so, it would create only about 10,000 jobs, a tiny fraction of the army Roosevelt put to work trib.al/pK04k9j

The fact is, though we don’t often think of it this way, Democrats and Republicans have come to share a core economic conviction: In a crisis, government’s role in addressing unemployment is to offer relief, not work trib.al/pK04k9j

Had Biden opted to offer Americans a deal rather than a rescue, temporary jobs could have benefited the nation in a variety of ways:

🔥Fighting wildfires
⛈️Helping communities recover from hurricanes
📝Running summer school sessions trib.al/pK04k9j

We can only guess what FDR might have thought of Biden's response to the pandemic.

But what holds the U.S. back from adopting a large, temporary public employment program has less to do with the skills and fitness of Americans than with changed attitudes trib.al/pK04k9j