By Jim McCraw
While it is maddening to know that President-elect Biden couldn’t get a really good start on 2021 between President Trump’s recalcitrance and COVID-19, there will eventually be a Biden administration, and it will be in trouble up to its hips from Day One.
Herewith, a suggestion for Biden/Harris I believe is important, and eminently doable. As Congress fights over both short- and long-term follow-up bills to the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act (CARES), which ends the day after Christmas, I think it might be time for something as ambitious (though relatively easy, considering the big funding levels already proposed) and quick to do as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), circa 1933. Let’s call the new one the American Reconstruction Corps (ARC).
Lord knows there are plenty of skilled and unskilled people out of work. And there are plenty of American infrastructure projects, largely ignored by the previous administration, that need doing.
Biden is not FDR, and we do not have a modern Robert Moses, the mid-20th Century “master builder” of New York, Long Island, Rochester and Westchester counties (it’s certainly not Donald J. Trump).
We are not Frank Lloyd Wright, the Ford Motor Company Whiz Kids, nor the first seven astronauts. We are just Americans who recognize a need to get a lot of things done by a mass of people willing to work. There has got to be a way to do this.
With widespread distribution of COVID-19 vaccines likely coming with warmer weather next summer, why couldn’t we dispatch squadrons of out-of-work Americans to do road, tunnel and bridge repairs that have been waiting years for funding and final approvals? And not just men, which is how the original CCC operated. Skilled and unskilled women need work, too. At, say, $20 per hour.
Why not send platoons of the willing into every one of the national parks to do repairs and cleaning?
While the original CCC troops had uniforms, meals and housing, I humbly suggest self-provided work clothing, bring-your-own meals, work near home, and ARC baseball caps in red, white and blue.
There will be periodic need for FEMA supplies and equipment after summer storms, so why not divert some FEMA funding, vehicles and materiel to help Americans fix the things that are already broken?
Yes, men and women working and sweating in close quarters for eight-hour days may be problematic from a health standpoint, but with masks, distancing and frequent washing and spraying, I think it could work. Let’s get some guys from Amazon, Apple, AT&T, Ford, Google and Tesla to volunteer, put them in a room and see if they can figure this out while Biden and Harris get on with the rest of the recovery.
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