We did it before and we can do it again

Interesting complaint in this article against Texas governor Rick Perry.
What Perry either ignores or doesn’t know is how greatly Texas has benefited from the investments and regulations of the federal government he despises. He grew up, he tells all who will listen, on a small, hardscrabble Texas farm. But it was Franklin Roosevelt’s Rural Electrification Administration that brought electricity to those farms, which, left to the mercies of the market, would have remained dark for decades. The New Deal threw money at Texas, bringing it dams, highways and schoolhouses. The cumulative effect of policies such as the federal minimum wage has been to diminish the disparity that long existed between the industrialized North and the more poverty-stricken South.
Money worked in the past, so it must work today.
What if we don't have the money now?
Or we don't use it properly.
New Deal money built roads and schools. Obama stimulus money buys consultants and environmental impact studies to think about building things down the road.
Democrats long for the glory days where their spending made a difference. If only their spending would trickle down to where it's supposed to go.