Word: pwa
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Senator Jimmy Byrnes last week wrote Franklin Roosevelt a note asking how he felt about the $125,000,000 which the House took out of WPA's new money for 1940 and allotted to PWA for heavy construction (TIME, June 26). When Jimmy Byrnes got his answer, it took his breath away...
...magical hat the long-awaited Great White Rabbit of 1939. It was a revolving, self-liquidating rabbit and Mr. Roosevelt put its life at a maximum seven years, its first-year size at $870,000,000, ultimate size $3,860,000,000. Rather than rob WPA to pay PWA said he, let Congress empower the following agencies to lend (NOT spend) the following sums on the following projects, which would pay for themselves in the end, interest payments meantime causing the funds to revolve...
...With that much money, WPA can give work to 2,000,000 clients, one-third less than the 1939 average. But $125,000,000 of it was earmarked for PWA, which is required to hire only 25% of its labor from Relief rolls. Off WPA's 2,000,000 that will knock 170,000 workers...
...PWA was limited to projects noncompetitive with private enterprise. That made Secretary Ickes yelp, because it ruled out a lot of power projects...
Lest advocates of WPA, most of whose money goes straight into workers' pockets, think that PWA is gravy only for contractors and material supply men, Harold Ickes took occasion to mention, in a public letter to Franklin Roosevelt last week, that in six years the workmen employed on PWA projects pocketed $1,205,452,000 in wages...