The new New Deal

President-elect Obama has put job creation and restoration of America's crumbling technological infrastructure at the center of his economic recovery plan, and it couldn't come at a better time.

Mr. Obama’s remarks showcased his ambition to expand the definition of traditional work programs for the middle class, like infrastructure projects to repair roads and bridges, to include new-era jobs in technology and so-called green jobs that reduce energy use and global warming emissions. “We need action — and action now,” Mr. Obama said in an address broadcast Saturday morning on radio and YouTube.

Mr. Obama’s plan, if enacted, would be in part a government-directed industrial policy, with lawmakers and administration officials picking winners and losers among private projects and raining large amounts of taxpayer money on them.

It would cover a range of programs to expand broadband Internet access, to make government buildings more energy efficient, to improve information technology at hospitals and doctors’ offices, and to upgrade computers in schools.

“It is unacceptable that the United States ranks 15th in the world in broadband adoption,” Mr. Obama said. “Here, in the country that invented the Internet, every child should have the chance to get online.”

President Bush and many conservative economists have opposed such large-scale government intervention in the economy because it supports enterprises that might not survive in a free market. That is the crux of the argument against a government bailout of the auto industry.

Yeah, but we've been watching the invisible hand of the free market rearrange the game pieces on us jerk itself off for the last few years, culminating in the current recession, so I'll just go out on a limb here and suggest that maybe, just maybe, it's time for a new approach.

Franklin D. Roosevelt put the country on the path out of the Great Depression by creating agencies like the Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps, and while the country ultimately needed a world war to emerge completely from economic ruin, it's important to recognize that we're not as bad off as we were in the 1930s (yet). Naturally, Republicans are quick to criticize that demonstrably successful approach (never mind that the president who oversaw the last major public works program of this magnitude, creation and construction of the interstate highway system, was -- gasp! -- a Republican, Dwight D. Eisenhower), but their arguments are almost painfully ignorant and ironic (as usual):

Mr. Bush and other Republicans have resisted such an approach in part out of concern for the already soaring federal budget deficit, which could easily hit $1 trillion this year. Borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars today to try to fix the economy, they argue, will leave a huge bill for the next generation.

Pardon me? This somehow is worse than borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars today to fight an unnecessary war? Or to pay off corporate bigwigs? Honestly, the hubris of these people knows no bounds. It's mighty nice of Drunky McStagger and the rest of the Bush crime syndicate to be worried about the deficit now ... after all, they created it! The bill's already in the mail, folks ...

No, it's clear that we need bold, decisive action now, just as we did in the '30s, to restore our economic health. And given the success of FDR's New Deal and Eisenhower's highways, the Obama plan is likely to reap similar dividends for the American people.