A new New Deal is not the solution

(By Rep. Virginia Foxx, Winston-Salem Journal) - "We are spending more [money] than we have ever spent before and it does not work. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. We have never made good on our promises. I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started and an enormous debt to boot."

Surprisingly, this statement is not one of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's criticisms of the Bush years. Instead, it's from Henry Morgenthau, secretary of the Treasury for 11 years under Franklin D. Roosevelt more than 70 years ago.

Morgenthau, given the task of financing and carrying out many of Roosevelt's Depression-era spending programs, made these remarks while testifying before Congress in 1939 -- at the tail end of the New Deal programs that had been started in 1933 when FDR was first elected.

Today the New Deal is back -- Morgenthau's candid comments about government spending notwithstanding. We all know the "new" New Deal by a less appealing title, the stimulus package.