A Stimulus Plan With a Long-Term Payoff

Move around any low-income neighborhood in the Washington area and you see many people who could really use an economic stimulus.

In the District, jobless teenagers and young adults hang out on street corners, their idle minds at risk of becoming devil's workshops. Along the city's border with Prince George's County, groups of young men participate in underground economies stimulated by guns and drugs. In a downturn, they don't worry about losing jobs as much as their lives.

On Capitol Hill, lawmakers recently proposed a $150 billion spending bill to stave off a national recession. Tax incentives for business investments and increases in unemployment benefits and food stamps are among the proposals being debated. Left out of the discussion are the economic needs of young people who, for want of money, become either productive members of society or a costly drag on it.

With so much money about to be injected into the economy, surely a modest chunk could be broken off to create jobs programs for them. Harry J. Holzer, a professor at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute and a visiting fellow at the Urban Institute, said the government should move quickly.

"If a jobs program is going to be part of an economic stimulus package, it's got to be set up within a few months and paychecks dispersed quickly," he told me. "The jobs will have to be obvious, with social benefits, and not require a lot of planning and recruiting."

So here's what I'd do:

Hire a brigade of young people to clean up the tributaries of the Anacostia and Potomac rivers. Have them spend a summer walking the banks of the Potomac -- from the District to the Chesapeake Bay -- picking up trash. Along with their paychecks, give them a school credit for environmental science.

Have you noticed how the outside walls on some public school buildings are marred by unsightly rust, water stains and graffiti? Rusting bars and steel-mesh screens on the windows make some schools look like abandoned prisons. Give the students some industrial scouring pads and pay them to scrub the schools clean.

Quite a few outdoor murals throughout the region used to be vibrant and beautiful, but their colors are fading. Instead of inviting us to be part of a community, they have become signs of abandonment. Hire crews of aspiring artists to spruce them up.

Recreation centers, playgrounds, trash-strewn vacant lots, outdoor art projects -- all could benefit from a jobs program aimed not just at stimulating the economy but also at strengthening the social fabric of the region.

"Who knows if such a program would have a long-term effect on increasing employment, but we do know that in the short term, jobs programs for youths keep them out of trouble," Holzer said. "While they are employed, they commit less crime."

D.C. Council member Marion Barry (D-Ward 8), whose ward in Southeast Washington has been the scene of several recent shootings, has suggested that double-digit unemployment among young black men contributes to the violence.

"Selling drugs and the violence that surrounds that, the increase in robberies and burglaries, all have to do with getting money," Barry told me. "I don't condone their behaviors, but these are crimes of economics."

A recent study by the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute found that poverty in the nation's capital is at its highest level in nearly a decade. One in five D.C. residents is poor. That adds up to 110,000 people. Among major U.S. cities, the District has one of the biggest income gaps between rich and poor. The incomes of the city's lowest-wage workers have stagnated, while salaries of top earners have soared. As the number of jobs has increased, employment of African American residents and people with no more than a high school diploma has declined. The employment rate for those groups is at a nearly 30-year low.

Paying youngsters to behave may strike some as a misuse of money, but we're about to spend billions to keep America from having a panic attack. Apparently money can calm the nerves.

And as everybody knows, the fastest way to put money back into the economy is to put it in the hands of a teenager. And keep the shoe stores and cellphone kiosks open late.

E-mail:milloyc@washpost.com