So as an expert on the history Joanathan Chait is talking about, let me set the record straight. (THREAD)
1. "The WPA is justifiably famous, but these days, not a lot of construction work can be done with just shovels." Contractors prefer to use machinery b/c it saves them labor costs, but there's no reason why you can't do construction WPA-style.
2. "You can’t just have your teachers and child-care workers come and go." Part time teachers' aides and child care jobs are a thing, so you absolutely can. H/e, there's no reason why you can't transition people from temp to permanent.
3. But here's the big thing: "At no point in this history — not during Roosevelt’s presidency, nor that of Truman, Kennedy, or Johnson — did Democrats actually design, let alone pass, a full-scale plan for permanent guaranteed employment."
4. Speaking as someone who's done archival work in the Truman, JFK, and LBJ Library, I can assure you this is not the case. The 1945-6 Full Employment Bill was written by the future head of Truman's CEA, Leon Keyserling.
5. Keyserling was active in Democratic Party politics during the Kennedy/Johnson years, helping to write the Freedom Budget with Bayard Rustin and A.P Randolph. (Guess what that included?)
6. During the Kennedy/Johnson years, the Labor Department and the Office of Economic Opportunity developed a number of increasingly more ambitious jobs plans as part of the War on Poverty, that began to move in the direction of a job guarantee.
7. Through Labor and OEO's activity w/i the Task Forces on the L.A Riots, Adult Work and Training Programs, Rehabilitation of Substandard Housing, and Urban Unemployment, they pushed the Fed govt to "pledge to serve all" thru "public employment jobs and/or income maintenance."
8. This was in 1967, at the same time that Robert Kennedy was introducing the Emergency Employment Act in the Senate, and Cong. O'Hara was introducing the "Guaranteed Employment Act" in the House. Then in 1973, you get the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act.
9. Shoved down Nixon's throat and expanded against his wishes, CETA became the largest function of the Labor Department. Starting in 1974, Hubert Humphrey and Augustus Hawkins began work on a plan for a job guarantee...drafted by our ol' pal Leon Keyserling.
10. When Carter was elected, there were no less than TWO plans for guaranteed jobs: the Humphrey-Hawkins Bill, and the "Program for Better Jobs and Income" (PBJI) which was a joint creation of the Labor Department and the Dept. of Health Education and Welfare.
11. But what really grinds my gears is that Chait doesn't talk about the fact that the Democratic Party platform included explicit commitments to full employment through direct job creation if necessary.
12. In 1968, the same year when Democrats were literally fighting themselves over the Vietnam plank, that platform called for "“for those who can work but cannot find jobs, we pledge to expand public job and job-training programs...to provide meaningful employment."
13. Humphrey-Hawkins was "the centerpiece of our party's 1976 platform," according to Tip O'Neill, and stated that "The Democratic Party is committed to the right of all adult Americans willing, able and seeking work to have opportunities for useful jobs at living wages."
14. In the course of my research for my forthcoming book, "People Must Live By Work," the number one reason for why these plans and pledges never came to pass was because of so-called liberal Democrats like Jonathan Chait getting cold feet, not conservative Republicans.
15. In 1945-6, it was liberal Democrats who removed all traces of the WPA from the Full Employment Bill. In 1964, it was liberal Democrats within the War on Poverty task forces who thought they didn't need jobs programs b/c of the tax cut.
16. And in 1976 and 1978, it was so-called liberals like Charles Schultze who freaked out about the collapse of the Phillips Curve in the face of 70s inflation, waterboarded the bill into irrelevance during negotiations with Humphrey and Hawkins, and then REFUSED to enforce it.
17. So while we should make every effort to defeat Trump, we need to keep our eye out for the Jonathan Chaits so they can't do the same damn thing in 2020. (END THREAD)
