During the Great Depression, anxious that the dole not become “narcotic,” in President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s words, the U.S. Congress in 1935 created the WPA to administer $5 billion for public works. The WPA's goal was to employ as many people as possible on projects that would provide long-term benefit to local communities. This created job’s to build bridges in disrepair, parks in shambles and fix boarded-up buildings. Ideally, workers would also receive on-the-job training to prepare them for further employment. For example, the WPA made a significant impact on Oklahoma. At the end of the day, of 166,000 Oklahomans certified for WPA jobs approximately 119,000 were employed at some point between 1935 and 1937. Including those recruited into a special drought-relief work program, more than half the state's work relief recipients were farmers. To assure that private employment remained appealing, project wages were lower than typical rates. Organized labor complained that the original unskilled rate of eighteen cents an hour depressed all wages. The Works Progress Administration (renamed during 1939 as the Work Projects Administration; WPA) was the largest and most determined new deal agency, employing millions of unskilled workers to carry out public works projects. This is the same project Obama is trying to reinstate to better the millions of unemployed Americans today: economic relief, a new deal, one that keeps unemployment below double digits by focusing on refurbishing the United States. Like most notions or strategies there are pros and cons.
The pro to this “New Deal” is the amount of jobs that will be created. The economic recovery bill by Democrats would