Jobs, not doleout

The President needs good economic advisers.

The advice I got from her economic adviser Albay Gov. Joey Salceda was, prepare because the rice crisis will last a bit long.

I expected Gov. Salceda to tell the President, “Give people jobs.” That I did not read. The advice I read, came from opposition Sen. Loren Legarda. Loren said, “Jobs, not doleout.”

Many bishops opposed the President’s doleout to the poor. It will make them lose their independence and dignity, they said.

There are two models the President can learn from. One is from her father, the late President Diosdado Macapagal. Macapagal won in 1961 beating incumbent President Carlos Garcia.

There was not much of a crisis then but Macapagal wanted to improve the economy further. I remember what he said that economy is deemed to have improved only if people in the rural areas earn better.

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He then introduced his signature program, “EEA”. I forgot the words but telling Fr. Felix Pasquin about our economic problem then, I asked if he could remember what EEA stood for.

EEA, Fr. Pasquin told me, stood for “Emergency Employment Administration.” I thought “A” stood for Authority because Macapagal patterned this after U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt’s “Tennesses Vallet Authority of 1933.”

Cong Dadong then launched his EEA program, giving people jobs in government projects in rural areas. These were economic projects, not sweeping the streets we saw before the 2004 Presidential election.

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But in 1965, Macapagal lost to Ferdinand Marcos. The main issue that was the clincher of FM’s victory was the price of rice. Macapagal’s right hand man was Fenny Hechanova of Iloilo and Marcos’ right hand man was Paeng Salas of Negros.

Salas outwitted Hechanova by working with the rice distribution people and saw to it some rice supplies were diverted and used the issue of “Mahal Bugas.” Rice was costly.

It was not really costly because the 1961 election was in November, harvest time. But the issue was just dinned into the people’s ears that rice was costly.

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O.K. I will go into another model. In 1932 Franklin Delano Roosevelt won the U.S. presidency. This was the worst time of the Great Depression in the U.S. People were hungry and jobless.

There was also the fear of the uncertainties. Hitler was saber rattling in Europe, organizing his Nazi youth. Very obvious he was preparing for war to avenge Germany’s defeat in World War I.

The economy was very bad. Japan was also arming in Asia.

When Roosevelt won he spoke at his inauguration. He told his people, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

Then during the interregnum – from his victory to the inauguration – he proposed many laws, unprecedented in U.S. history. The most important of which was the Tennessee Valley Authority.

Ask bankers who have read banking history, in the days before Roosevelt took office, he closed all the nation’s banks and reopened them only after the Banking Act was passed. He was a strong leader served the unprecedented four successive terms and did not step down because he died in his fourth term.

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In his first year, aside from the Banking Act and  the TVA, he also signed the Agricultural Adjustment Act, Securities and Exchange Commission regulatory corporations, Public Works Administration, and many more on recovery and relief as well as reconstruction.

Our own Development Bank of the Philippines was formerly Rehabilitation Finance Corporation or RFC, a carbon copy of Roosevelt’s RFC.

But the biggest help was the TVA that gave jobs to millions of people.

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The development of the Tennessee Valley was planned as early as 1900 but it was Roosevelt who put it into work. The Valley covers 40,910 square miles and seven states, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi.

Hundreds of thousands of people worked in the many projects put up by government, irrigation, hydro power plants, putting up water districts tapping the Mississippi River.

Can the President’s economic advisers not think of these too?

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Of course, the other solution to the crisis was World War II with the U.S. war factories going to full operation and young men sent abroad to fight.*

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