Calls for CCC Program For Gulf of Mexico, and Haiti, Too

Former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich has followed up his proposal for putting BP into receivership, with a call for creating a Roosevelt-style CCC program to put unemployed American youth to work cleaning BP's damage in the Gulf of Mexico. As he put it in a June 6 entry on his blog:

"Friday's job report was awful. For most new high school and college grads finding a job is harder than ever. Meanwhile, states are cutting summer jobs for disadvantaged young people. What to do with this army of young unemployed? Send them to the Gulf to clean up beaches and wetlands, and send the bill to BP...

"Most of the oil hasn't hit land yet. When it does, hundreds of thousands of workers will be needed to clean beaches, siphon off oil from wetlands, and rescue stranded wildlife. Tens of thousands more will have to bring in new landfill, replace tarred sea walls, and rebuild shoreline infrastructure.

"Yet we've got hundreds of thousands of young people sitting on their hands right now because they can't find jobs.... The President should order BP to establish a $5 billion clean-up fund, and immediately put America's army of unemployed young people to work saving the Gulf coast. Call it the new Civilian Conservation Corps."

There are Republicans who would support such a CCC-style mobilization. A Republican Congressman from Florida, Rep. Gary Miller, introduced a bill at the end of April for the creation of a similar style U.S. program to aid the reconstruction in Haiti. Miller's proposed "'Partnership With America' Rapid Rebuilding of Haiti Act of 2010" does not cite the CCC, but the gist is the same, and coheres with Lyndon LaRouche's call for mobilizing a CCC program to save Haiti, and give a mission to U.S. youth, too.

HR 5171 would "create a program under which ... U.S. construction and reconstruction experts and workers who currently are unemployed or significantly underemployed shall begin work in Haiti on an organized and coordinated plan to help Haitians rebuild the infrastructure of Haiti, including roads, airports, energy facilities, schools, hospitals, and other services fundamental to economic development, including permanent housing for persons who lost their housing because of the earthquake."

Respectful of Haiti's sovereignty, the short bill calls for a plan to be developed "anticipating the needs of a Haitian economy that does not merely return to pre-earthquake levels but grows fast enough to provide jobs for Haitians and raise the overall standard of living in that country;" and "seek to ensure that the U.S. workers do not take the place of Haitian workers, but instead supplement, coordinate, and mentor Haitian construction workers, and train them so that an adequate and adequately trained Haitian construction force is left in place to accommodate the hoped-for future growth of the Haitian economy."