Obama urges revival of the CCC

Obama’s Bridge Collapse:

President Obama made a swing through the Northern Kentucky/Cincinnati area today to stand near a bridge and call out Speaker Boehner and Senate Minority Leader McConnell (whose states, by “pure coincidence,” the bridge just happens to connect) for not passing his ‘jobs bill’ already.

Jay Carney set the stage last week, saying, “It’s pretty clear that this bridge could benefit from a little repair and renovation.” Saying the bridge is “in such poor condition that it has been labeled functionally obsolete,” the President today demanded immediate passage of his ‘jobs bill’ to put people to work right now. But this kabuki dance is less about bridges than those dastardly Republicans:

“It desperately needs rebuilding, as do substandard roads and bridges all across America,” White House spokeswoman Amy Brundage said. As the two most powerful Republicans in Washington, Speaker Boehner and Senator (Mitch) McConnell can either kill this jobs bill or help the president pass it right away.”

“Instead of looking for every excuse to justify doing nothing about the damaged infrastructure in their states, we believe it’s in their interest and the country’s interest to act as soon as possible and put people back to work.”

In the Great Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt founded the Civilian Conservation Corps, CCC, as a make-work organization for men 18-25 whose families were on relief. Wikipedia:

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a public work relief program that operated from 1933 to 1942 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men from relief families, ages 18–25. A part of the New Deal of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, it provided unskilled manual labor jobs related to the conservation and development of natural resources in rural lands owned by federal, state and local governments. The CCC was designed to provide employment for young men in relief families who had difficulty finding jobs during the Great Depression while at the same time implementing a general natural resource conservation program in every state and territory. Maximum enrollment at any one time was 300,000; in nine years 2.5 million young men participated. Reserve officers from the U.S. Army were in charge of the camps, but there was no military training or uniforms.

But even FDR had to deal with the unions.

To end the opposition from labor unions (which wanted no training programs started when so many of their men were unemployed)[9] Roosevelt picked a union official, Fechner, and took William Green, head of the American Federation of Labor, to the first camp to demonstrate that there would be no job training involved beyond simple manual labor.

Now, bridge repair or construction involves not much unskilled labor and you can bet that the unions are solidly behind such work. But Obama's "jobs" bills is essentially an updated version of FDR's CCC: federal spending to funnel federal dollars to private pockets. Only Obama is being far more careful about who would get the money. But Obama's appearance before the bridge today was just Potemkin theater: his "jobs" bill has nothing to do with the bridge in the background.

For one thing, the river crossing in question is already slated for a new bridge. It’s been in the planning stages for years; the project is currently barely into the public comment phase. In fact, Obama’s own FHWA doesn’t expect it to start construction in 2015 or be completed until 2022. 

The President did not explain how his ‘jobs bill’ will alter time so that the project can start creating jobs “right now.” Worse, Obama, Carney, and Brudnage are flat-out wrong. The I-75 corridor is indeed outdated, but the bridge itself doesn’t actually need repairs:

It’s got decades of good life left in its steel spans. It’s just overloaded. The bridge was built to handle 85,000 cars and trucks a day, which seemed like a lot back during construction in the Nixon era. [Ed. - the bridge opened five years before Nixon was elected President.] Today, the bridge sort of handles more than 150,000 vehicles a day with frequent jam-ups. So, plans are not to repair or replace the Brent Spence Bridge. But to build another bridge nearby to ease the loads.

But when there are unions to appeased and political demons to be made, why let the facts get in the way?

Update: Although terminated as a federal program after American entered World War II, there is a modern CCC operating today - the California Conservation Corps, motto, "Hard work, low pay, miserable conditions ... and more!"