The New Deal had two components--one to help the economy to recover from the effects of the
great depression, and a second component to give relief to the American people and to insure that they would never be placed in a position of total destitution again. To help heal the economy Roosevelt created programs that regulated business, controlled inflation, and brought about price stabilization; to bring relief to the people he signed The National Labor Relations Act which guaranteed workers the right to collective bargaining, and he created the Social Security Administration to guarantee workers some sort of income once they became too old to work. He also signed the Fair Labor Standards Act which protected workers rights and set a minimum wage for workers.
With his New Deal in place Franklin Delano Roosevelt, this "bleeding heart liberal", not only led
this country out of the worst, Republican generated, crisis that this country has ever faced, but
went on to lead the free world in victory over Hitler in WWII. He then ushered in the most
sustained prosperity that the world has ever known.
One would think that conservatives would have seen the light, but their passion to further enrich
the wealthy at the expense of the middle and lower classes seems to supersede all logic–and the last election clearly shows that not even the Constitution will stand in the way of their zeal to promote their agenda. Thus, from the moment that the New Deal went into place, conservatives have been determined to dismantle it. The closest they've come to succeeding started during the Reagan Administration with Supply-Side Economics, or, "Reaganomics"--and the battle is currently raging in Washington D.C. as we speak.
Supply- Side Economics was a scheme hatched by U.S.C. economist Arthur Laffer and the Reagan crowd which was supposed to cut the deficit and balance the budget. The theory behind
Reaganomics was ostensibly, if you cut taxes for business and people in the upper tax brackets,
and then deregulated business of such nuisances as safety regulations and environmental
safeguards, the beneficiaries would invest their savings into creating new jobs. In that way the
money would eventually "trickle down" to the rest of us. The resulting broadened tax base would
not only help to bring down the deficit, but also subsidize the tremendously high defense budget.
When the plan was first floated, even George Bush, Reagan's vice president to be, called it
"voodoo economics."
Reaganomics, for the most part, sought to undo many of the safeguards put into place during the
Roosevelt era and create a business environment similar to that which was in place during the
Coolidge Administration. What actually took place, however, was even more like the Coolidge
era than planed. Instead of taking the money and investing it into creating new jobs, the money
was used in wild schemes and stock market speculation. One of these schemes, the leveraged buy out, involved buying up large companies with borrowed funds secured by the company's assets, then paying off the loan by selling off the assets of the purchased company. This practice cost the citizens of this country an untold number of jobs. In addition, the bottom fell out of the stock market. On Monday, October 19, 1987 the Dow-Jones Average fell 508.32 points. It was the greatest one-day decline since 1914 - 15 years before the Great Depression.
And what about Ronald Reagan's promise to balance the budget and lower the deficit? By the
time he left office he was not only the most prolific spender of any president, but he also added
more to the deficit than all of the other presidents from George Washington to his own administration combined. And what does the Republican Party propose to do about that? One of the Republican proposals in their "contract with America" was a capitol gains tax cut--for the rich.
History is clear. The conservative Republicans don't mind spending money, they just don't want
to spend it on those who need it--us. Remember, they're the party of Alexander Hamilton, one
of this country's founding fathers who believed that only those who owned property should even
be allowed to vote. He also said:
All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the
rich and wellborn, the other the mass of the people.... The people are turbulent
and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first
class a distinct, permanent share in government. They will check the unsteadiness
of the second, and as they cannot receive an advantage by a change, they therefore
will ever maintain good government.
Debates of the Federalist Convention (May 14-September 17, 1787).
So, let's set the record straight. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, that "bleeding heart liberal", not only
brought the nation back from the Great Depression and saved the world from Hitler during his
life, but his "New Deal" for the American people gave us the greatest prosperity we've ever
known. It also allowed him to reach back from the grave to save the nation from Ronald Reagan 50 years after his death.
That isn't to say that the liberal Democratic philosophy corners the market on what is in the best
interest of the nation--it is clear that both parties have had illustrious moments in the past--but
rather, that this is one of those defining issues in American politics that determines whether this is to be a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, or a government where the
citizens or nothing more than disposable resources for big business.
Eric L. Wattree