Photo: Gavin Aronsen

“I think we need a new New Deal in Iowa, and in America”: Chet Culver speaks to guests before giving his keynote address at the annual Story County Democrats Soup Supper Saturday evening in Ames.

Invoking the economic programs of FDR in Ames last Saturday, Iowa Governor Chet Culver made his case for infrastructure and flood recovery programs to spark job creation in the state.

He stopped at the Collegiate United Methodist Church to give the keynote address at this year’s Story County Democrats Soup Supper. His speech focused almost exclusively on the economy — in line with the supper’s “Next New Deal” theme — as he laid out his $700 million state stimulus proposal.

“Like Franklin Roosevelt, we can and we will turn this economy [around],” Culver said. He cited the FDR New Deal agency Works Progress Administration and a number of others as models for new “swift, bold action” at the federal and state levels, warning that “risks” would be necessary.

Culver praised Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats’ work on the stimulus bill that is expected to become law soon — a test vote on Monday for the Senate version of the bill successfully made it to filibuster-proof territory, 61-36. The governor said Iowa is “becoming the Silicon Valley of the Midwest,” voicing his support for renewable energy proposals in the bill.

FDR is still a political bogeyman for the socialism-fearing right, but his presidency has experienced a revival in the nation’s political dialogue since Obama took office last month. It’s a big leap away from Bush and makes sense: both presidents were inspiring voices of Democratic populism when they inherited a badly shaken economy.

But the right’s suspicion that Obama and company are veering hard left on the economy may be premature, and Culver’s enthusiasm may be too. In a New York Times blog post published the day Culver came to Ames, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman wrote:

Now the [Senate] centrists have shaved off $86 billion in spending — much of it among the most effective and most needed parts of the plan. In particular, aid to state governments, which are in desperate straits, is both fast — because it prevents spending cuts rather than having to start up new projects — and effective, because it would in fact be spent; plus state and local governments are cutting back on essentials, so the social value of this spending would be high. But in the name of mighty centrism, $40 billion of that aid has been cut out.

Krugman has long been critical of the tax cuts Republicans have been trying to push into the stimulus package. He’s also suggested nationalizing the banks, as has fellow Nobel Prize economist Joseph Stiglitz.

But the Obama administration reportedly never reached out to Stiglitz, and its economic team of Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner is hardly a major break from the norm. It remains unclear whether Obama plans on approaching the grandeur of the hard-nosed, sometimes almost dictatorial FDR, and just how receptive Obama will be to the progressive left in an arena of discourse where “bipartisanship” is the latest buzzword. (For the record, FDR also chose capitalism over nationalization for the banking system.)

An Associated Press analysis of Obama’s handling of the economic stimulus debate takes a critical look at the president. Its verdict:

On his first big test, Barack Obama made some rookie mistakes and strategic missteps. But he still appears headed for a win on the centerpiece of his agenda, a huge economic recovery program, with the fresh striking of a bipartisan deal in the Senate.

The results of this and future recovery attempts will no doubt play a role in cementing Obama’s legacy. The public seems willing to give him a chance. New CNN polls found that a 54-45 majority supports the Democrats’ stimulus plan and that while 60 percent of the public approves of the job Democrats are doing in Congress, only 44 percent approve of the job of Republicans (every Republican in the House voted against that version of the plan, which had more emphasis on spending over tax cuts than the Senate bill). A Gallup poll reached similar conclusions.

And with the money Iowa will likely soon receive, Culver will receive resources — if not as many as he may desire — that he can start using to help revitalize the economy, which, he said at the soup supper, would include the creation of flood recovery construction jobs and an expansion of Iowa’s rail system.