FDR’s CCC was AAA. What’s Biden Doing?
Wall Street Journal, April 9, 2024
FDR’s CCC Was AAA. What’s Biden Doing?
“If you put a rose in his hand, it
would wilt” was a saying once unfairly directed at President Herbert
Hoover but which applies in full to
President Biden’s miniaturized “climate corps” proposal (“Biden Builds
a Domestic Green Army,” Review &
Outlook, April 3). The promotion of
electricity use, as Sen. Joe Manchin
instantly recognized, is a gift to the
coal industry and has little to do with
climate or youth employment.
The Civilian Conservation Corps,
however, was the most popular of
New Deal programs. Gen. George
Marshall made his reputation organizing for the Army the early part of
its training programs, which were directed to permanent noncontroversial
causes not fashionable on K Street:
soil conservation, flood control, reclamation of abandoned mines, creation
of national parks, footpaths and
youth hostels.
There isn’t 25% national unemployment today, but there are permanently unemployed male youth in inner cities and declining towns in
the Rust Belt and Plains states, ravaged by drug abuse, bad schools and
fatherless families on a scale that
didn’t exist in the 1930s. A new President or a determined Congress can
forswear ideology and follow the
dictates of good sense and historical
experience.
GEORGE W. LIEBMANN
Baltimore
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