Newsweek: The New New Deal

From Newsweek:

While comparisons to past decades and former presidents have been a bitoverplayed of late, especially around the inauguration, bear with us a momentwhile we mention the dark days of the 1930s again. Back then, with unemploymentnearing a record 24 percent, Franklin Roosevelt announced plans to getAmericans back to work, creating the now-iconic Works Progress Administration(as well as its predecessors, the Civil Works Administration and the FederalEmergency Relief Administration). From 1935 to 1943, Uncle Sam wrote checks tomore than 8 million men and women who were building bridges to somewhere,laying down golf courses and creating images of America that remain indelible:New York's Triborough Bridge (recently renamed for Robert F. Kennedy), forexample, and Minneapolis's Walker Arts Center.