The need for a Keynesian revenue-sharing program is clear. After Congress approved stimulus legislation in 2009, Lawrence H. Summers, head of the National Economic Council, said that “it’s harder to spend $300 billion within a year on quality projects than you might think.” And no wonder the task was tough: decision makers in Washington were removed from local needs.

Martin Shubik, a professor of mathematical institutional economics at Yale, has proposed creating a “Federal Employment Reserve Authority,” a permanent agency that would do extensive research and maintain a detailed list of ready-to-go public works projects should a recession come. That’s a great idea, but we do not have such an agency now, and, if we did, it might still suffer from a Washington bias.

Now, local governments are laying off a wide variety of employees, including teachers, police officers and social workers. So why don’t we embrace general revenue sharing? Unfortunately, when faced with a need for stimulus, members of Congress seem to prefer to start their own projects, for which they are likely to get more credit from voters. Local governments, meanwhile, which are more likely to know where spending is really needed, remain in deep trouble.

It’s time for the public to assert loftier expectations. We need to respect existing government bureaus and organizations for their ideas, and get down to the business of financing important jobs temporarily, and on a huge scale. This will avert more layoffs, and perhaps give cities and states time to recover to the point they can pay local employees from local revenue.

When the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt began its vast job creation program in 1933, it had to accept certain practical realities, which limited the immediate stimulus that could be provided. Foremost among them was that the government had to work largely within the framework of existing organizations  whether state and local governments, the military or nonprofit groups  which provided much of the economy’s infrastructure.

Economic stimulus is not a matter of turning on the money spigot, as some economists are wont to describe it. It is about getting the widespread cooperation of dispersed organizations to provide jobs, at least for as long as the economy is weak.