President-elect Barack Obama faces an economic crisis that is similar, but not yet as dire, as the one that confronted Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who took office in 1932 in the midst of the Great Depression. Still, he can take a lesson from FDR who knew that the immensity of the problems required the taking of bold steps.

One example of this is the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), which FDR set up in 1933 as a public works projects to take jobless young men off the streets and put them to work. Roosevelt was initially vilified as a socialist and attacked politically for being a big, liberal spender who was creating another government boondoggle….sound familiar?

Obama, like FDR, faces similar economic woes however the world is a much different, more sophisticated place requiring a more comprehensive approach dealing with the needs of the technical and non-technical work forces.

He is pledging to "renew our information super-highway" offering a plan likely to lead to major increases in IT spending — especially for broadband deployment and technology for schools and health care.

“It is unacceptable that the United States ranks 15th in the world in broadband adoption,” Mr. Obama said. “Here, in the country that invented the Internet, every child should have the chance to get online.”

The President-elect’s solution is to create the largest public works construction program since the inception of the interstate highway system a half century ago as he seeks to put together a plan to resuscitate the reeling economy.  

Obama hasn’t yet put a price tag on his plan, but since his overall stimulus package is expected to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars, money for any Internet-related initiatives could be large. But in spending big sums on technology, the Obama administration will have to show that these tech investments will deliver. Linking the bottom line to IT investments is not an easy case to make.

Obama’s conundrum is his desire to strengthen the nation with a vast fiscal stimulus package that invests in transportation, green energy and broadband access while helping those with less schooling as improving the information super-highway is unlikely to employ large numbers of high school dropouts.

How can the president-elect both spend wisely and help those with fewer skills? How can he balance equity and efficiency?

On Friday, the Labor Department reported that the unemployment rate rose to 6.7 percent, but there are remarkable disparities between more- and less-educated Americans. Last month, the unemployment rate for college graduates held steady at 3.1 percent, while the unemployment rate for individuals with only high school degrees jumped from 6.3 to 6.8 percent. Over the past year, the unemployment rate for college graduates increased less than a percentage point, while the unemployment rate for high school dropouts grew from 7.6 percent to 10.5 percent.

As a result, the needs of these two groups must be addressed especially given the fact that 1 in 10 high school dropouts is now unemployed. Yet President-elect Obama’s fiscal plan focuses on sectors like transportation, energy and communication infrastructure, and much of the money spent in those sectors doesn’t go to less skilled workers. Many of the jobs in areas like clean energy and building broadband lines require specific skills that are rare among unemployed high school dropouts.

Obviously the President-elect will be challenged to fulfill the needs of the less skilled workers or else his solution leave many Americans with no “boot-straps” to pull themselves up with.

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