New Deal programs and initiatives established (1 gen 1933 anni – 1 gen 1938 anni)

Descrizione:

The New Deal answered the Great Depression by offering Americans security and hope. FDR and Congress created a powerful social-welfare state that took unprecedented responsibility for the well-being of all citizens. During the 1930s, millions of people began to pay taxes directly to the Social Security Administration, and more than one-third of the population received direct government assistance from federal programs. New legislation regulated the stock market, reformed the banking system, and subjected business corporations to federal oversight. The New Deal’s template would stand for the rest of the twentieth century. In the 1960s, Lyndon Johnson and the “Great Society” Congress dramatically expanded social-welfare programming — by creating Medicare and Medicaid, for instance — most of which remained intact even after the “Reagan Revolution” of the 1980s (Chapter 29).

Like any major political transformation, the New Deal was criticized as both doing too much and not doing enough. Conservatives, who prioritized limited government and individual freedom, felt that the New Deal state encroached on the liberty of both citizens and business. Conversely, advocates of social-welfare liberalism complained that the New Deal’s safety net had too many holes: no national health-care system, welfare programs that excluded domestic workers and farm laborers, and too much leeway for state governments to limit benefits.

Even with its many critics, the New Deal unquestionably transformed the American political landscape. From 1896 to 1932, the Republican Party had commanded the votes of a majority of Americans. Franklin Roosevelt’s magnetic personality and innovative programs brought millions of voters into the Democratic fold, and tilted the electoral balance. New Democratic voters included first- and second-generation immigrants from southern and central Europe — Italians, Poles, Russians, and Slavs, among others, most of them Catholic or Jewish — as well as African American migrants to northern cities. Organized labor aligned itself with a Democratic administration that recognized unions as a legitimate force in modern industrial life. The elderly and the unemployed, assisted by the Social Security Act, likewise supported FDR. This New Deal coalition of ethnic groups, city dwellers, union labor, African Americans, and middle-class progressives would support further liberal reforms in the decades to come.

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