Randall Bourscheidt, president of Alliance for the Arts, is blogging for The Huffington Post. An excerpt of the first post, Let the Arts Help Rebuild the Economy, is below. Read the full article on The Huffington Post.

"Hopes are soaring that President-elect Obama's new public works program will help generate the jobs that have been catastrophically lost in recent months. His plans awaken memories of the New Deal, when President Roosevelt led an unprecedented investment in the nation's infrastructure.

The big WPA projects, like the dams that brought electricity to rural areas, focused on the needs of the day. At the community level, the WPA built schools and libraries and parks.

This time, Mr. Obama and the new Congress should include cultural institutions in the infrastructure program. They have a unique power to generate jobs, stabilize communities, build the tourist industry and stimulate the creative economy that our technology-driven world increasingly depends on.