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1932 › Franklin D. Roosevelt (Democratic) › Public works as employment policy
Public works spending is only a stopgap, not a cure for unemployment
pledge_forwarddirectional_stancecandidate_directevidence A Infrastructure & Public WorksRelief, Welfare & Social Insurance⚡ The Great Depression similar solutions · similar reasoning
Solution
Do not rely on huge federal, state and local public-works expenditure to solve unemployment; treat it as a temporary expedient and attack causes (farm purchasing power, mortgages, tariff) instead. Later superseded by the Boston program of October 31 embracing public works and federal relief (see 1932-fdr-boston-unemployment-program).
Rationale
Even many billions on useful public works could not employ seven to ten million unemployed; "a real economic cure must go to the killing of the bacteria in the system rather than to the treatment of external symptoms."
Early-campaign orthodoxy; the position drifts sharply by autumn. Kept as a distinct record so the drift is queryable.
Position chain: Expand self-sustaining public works and temporary federal work (forests, flood control, waterways), with advance planning
Statements (1)
People suggest that a huge expenditure of public funds by the Federal Government and by State and local governments will completely solve the unemployment problem. But it is clear that even if we could raise many billions of dollars and find definitely useful public works to spend these billions on, even all that money would not give employment to the seven million or ten million people who are out of work. Let us admit frankly that it would be only a stopgap.
Follow-through
reversed
Within four months of taking office Roosevelt asked for $3.3 billion of public works (NIRA Title II), created the Civil Works Administration for the winter of 1933–34, and in 1935 the WPA. The April 1932 view that public works were 'only a stopgap' was abandoned in practice, though the administration never claimed they would employ all the unemployed.
Mechanisms
| Date | Type | Name | Effect | Consistent? | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1933-05-17 | message | NIRA message: $3.3 billion public works | A careful survey convinces me that approximately $3,300,000,000 can be invested in useful and necessary public construction, and at the same time put the largest possible number of people to work. | no | Message to Congress Recommending Enactment of the National Industrial Recovery Act. |
| 1935-04-08 | statute | Emergency Relief Appropriation Act (WPA) | $4.88 billion work-relief appropriation. | no | Statement on Signing the Work Relief Bill. |
Assessments
The PWA alone had a budget over $3 billion and the CWA spent nearly $1 billion in four months.
The PWA, run by Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, had a budget of over $3 billion.
Other positions on this issue
- 'Employment for all surplus labor at all times' through self-liquidating public works (the Shearon letter, as Hoover read it) — Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1932 specific_pledge
- Expand self-sustaining public works and temporary federal work (forests, flood control, waterways), with advance planning — Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1932 specific_pledge
- Federal construction at three times normal and $1.5 billion of RFC loans for self-liquidating works — but no pork-barrel or non-productive projects — Herbert Hoover, 1932 specific_pledge
- Ratify the St. Lawrence seaway treaty and complete the inland waterway system — Herbert Hoover, 1932 specific_pledge
- The Garner-Rainey $1.2 billion public-works bill — and a pledge to reintroduce it — John Nance Garner, 1932 specific_pledge
- A $5 billion federal public-works program — roads, reforestation, slum clearance, workers' housing — and idle factories and land turned over to the unemployed — Norman Thomas, 1932 specific_pledge
1932-fdr-public-works-only-a-stopgap · created by claude-fable-5-1 · review: unreviewed