Why Liberal's Job Creation Programs Don't Work- It's not 1935

A good point via The Atlantic and This is Not Your FDR's Federal Government

My father was the head of a trade association for the heavy construction industry, and most of my closest relatives either work for the government, or have done so in the past. As you can imagine, over my lifetime I've had a lot of conversations about government procedure and government projects. Every so often I'll read some description of a project out of the olden days--the battle against malaria in Panama, the handling of the Great Mississippi Flood, or the creation of the WPA--and just marvel at how fast everything used to be. The WPA was authorized in April of 1935. By December, it was employing 3.5 million people. The Hoover Dam took 16 years from the time it was first proposed, to completion; eight years, if you start counting from the time it passed Congress.

Contrast this with a current, comparatively trivial project: it has been seventeen years since the Southeast High Speed Rail Corridor was established by USDOT, and we should have a Record of Decision on the Tier II environmental impact statement no later than 2010. This for something that runs along existing rail rights of way, and in fact, uses currently operating track in many places.

I imagine this all sounds like a nattering nabob of negativity. If there are procedural hurdles to jobs programs and high speed rail, we should challenge them, not resign ourselves to subpar policy!

Look, I may be skeptical that health care reform will be a net positive, but I do concede there's some chance I'm wrong (and I will be glad if it is so). But this is not merely unlikely; is is the next nearest thing to impossible, short of armed revolution. Many of the procedural hurdles involve court rulings, concerning law which Congress cannot overturn in some cases (due process), or isn't going to (civil rights legislation, civil service protections). The obstacles arise out of things that individually, people, specifically Democrats, like: transparency, due process, environmental care, civil rights, unionism. Cumulatively, they are devastating to federal productivity. But it's hard to get much support for repealing or altering them individually--which is what you would have to do. Philip Howard has built a second career out of railing against the steady trend towards hyperproceduralism, of which this is a small part. ....................

I think this is all a good point. Lets face it when the Government gets behinds something things can happen. LETS GO TO THE MOON. LETS BUILD THE ATOMIC BOMB. But it is not that era. I suspect if Reagan had been the first to say lets go to the moon we would be just getting there now. People were shocked that the gulf Coast was not rebuilt over night after Katrina. I was not. Sadly the above factors come into play. Herbert Hoover , who headed up the Great Mississippi Flood Recovery effort never had the hurdles that Bush had to deal with on a daily basis.