Today's Highlighted Published Opinion's featuring FDR Policies

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NICHOLAS KRISTOF

Joe Biden Is Electrifying America Like F.D.R.

May 1, 2021

By Nicholas Kristof

Opinion Columnist

YAMHILL, Ore. — The best argument for President Biden’s three-part proposal to invest heavily in America and its people is an echo of Franklin Roosevelt’s explanation for the New Deal.

“In 1932 there was an awfully sick patient called the United States of America,” Roosevelt said in 1943. “He was suffering from a grave internal disorder … and they sent for a doctor.”

Paging Dr. Joe Biden.

We should be cleareyed about both the enormous strengths of the United States — its technologies, its universities, its entrepreneurial spirit — and its central weakness: For half a century, compared with other countries, we have underinvested in our people.

In 1970, the United States was a world leader in high school and college attendance, enjoyed high life expectancy and had a solid middle class. This was achieved in part because of Roosevelt.

The New Deal was imperfect and left out too many African-Americans and Native Americans, but it was still transformative.

Here in my hometown, Yamhill, the New Deal was an engine of opportunity. A few farmers had rigged generators on streams, but Roosevelt’s rural electrification brought almost everyone onto the grid and output soared. Jobs programs preserved the social fabric and built trails that I hike on every year. The G.I. Bill of Rights gave local families a shot at education and homeownership.

Roosevelt’s Public Works Administration provided $27,415 in 1935 (the equivalent of $530,000 today) to help build a high school in Yamhill. That provided jobs for 90 people on the relief rolls, and it created the school that I attended and that remains in use today.

In short, the New Deal invested in the potential and productivity of my little town — and of much of the nation. The returns were extraordinary.

These kinds of investments in physical infrastructure (interstate highways) and human capital (state universities and community colleges) continued under Democratic and Republican presidents alike. They made America a stronger nation and a better one.

Yet beginning in the 1970s, America took a wrong turn. We slowed new investments in health and education and embraced a harsh narrative that people just need to lift themselves up by their bootstraps. We gutted labor unions, embraced inequality and shrugged as working-class America disintegrated. Average weekly wages for America’s production workers were actually lower in December 2020 ($860) than they had been, after adjusting for inflation, in December 1972 ($902 in today’s money).

What does that mean in human terms? I’ve written about how one-quarter of the people on my old No. 6 school bus died of drugs, alcohol or suicide — “deaths of despair.” That number needs to be updated: The toll has risen to about one-third.

We allocated large sums of taxpayer dollars to incarcerate my friends and their children. Biden proposes something more humane and effective — investing in children, families and infrastructure in ways that echo Roosevelt’s initiatives.

The most important thread of Biden’s program is his plan to use child allowances to cut America’s child poverty in half. Biden’s main misstep is that he would end the program in 2025 instead of making it permanent; Congress should fix that.

The highest return on investment in America today isn’t in private equity but in early childhood initiatives for disadvantaged kids of all races. That includes home visitations, lead reduction, pre-K and child care.

Roosevelt started a day care program during World War II to make it easier for parents to participate in the war economy. It was a huge success, looking after perhaps half a million children, but it was allowed to lapse after the war ended.

Biden’s proposal for day care would be a lifeline for young children who might be neglected. Aside from the wartime model, we have another in the U.S.: The military operates a high-quality on-base day care system, because that supports service members in performing their jobs.

Then there are Biden’s proposed investments in broadband; that’s today’s version of rural electrification. Likewise, free community college would enable young people to gain technical skills and earn more money, strengthening working-class families.

Some Americans worry about the cost of Biden’s program. That’s a fair concern. Yet this is not an expense but an investment: Our ability to compete with China will depend less on our military budget, our spy satellites or our intellectual property protections than on our high school and college graduation rates. A country cannot succeed when so many of its people are failing.

As many Americans have criminal records as college degrees. A baby born in Washington, D.C., has a shorter life expectancy (78 years) than a baby born in Beijing (82 years). Newborns in 10 counties in Mississippi have a shorter life expectancy than newborns in Bangladesh. Rather than continue with Herbert Hoover-style complacency, let’s acknowledge our “grave internal disorder” and summon a doctor.

The question today, as in the 1930s, is not whether we can afford to make ambitious investments in our people. It’s whether we can afford not to.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/01/opinion/sunday/biden-fdr-americans.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Sunday%20Review

When Biden Becomes … Rooseveltian!

Using a crisis to reduce child poverty and make America more truly a land of opportunity.

By Nicholas Kristof

Opinion Columnist

• Jan. 16, 2021

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Soon after Franklin Roosevelt was inaugurated in 1933, a visitor assessed the stakes of his New Deal proposal.

“Mr. President, if your program succeeds, you’ll be the greatest president in American history,” the visitor told him. “If it fails, you will be the worst one.”

“If it fails,” Roosevelt responded, “I’ll be the last one.”

That story, from Jonathan Alter’s excellent book “The Defining Moment,” about Roosevelt’s first 100 days, underscores the desperation and uncertainty in the Great Depression as Roosevelt took office — a desperation that may seem familiar today. The Federal Reserve chairman, Eugene Meyer, was introduced at that time to the son of a White House staffer as “Governor Meyer,” so the boy asked him, “What state are you the governor of?”

“The state of bankruptcy,” Meyer answered.

This is not the Great Depression today, but we face the worst economic crisis since that time, plus about 4,000 Americans dying daily from the worst pandemic in a century, plus an insurrection incited by the lame-duck president, plus an undercurrent of national delusion that fuels division and violence. Countless numbers believe QAnon nonsense that leading politicians are Satan-worshiping child-traffickers or think coronavirus vaccination is a plot by Bill Gates to plant computer chips in people.

In some ways, F.D.R. had it easy.

That’s the context of President-elect Joe Biden’s “America Rescue Plan,” a far-reaching effort to revive the American economy — and to do much more. Like Roosevelt, Biden is employing a crisis to try to address long-neglected problems in our country. This is Big Policy. You might even call it Rooseveltian.

Of course, what was significant about Roosevelt was the scale not of what he proposed but of what he achieved, and even if Biden’s initial proposal gets through Congress, it does not add up to anything close to the 12-year revolution that was the New Deal. But after years of hesitation and half-steps, it’s thrilling to see truly bold efforts to tackle some of America’s deepest underlying problems.

Coverage of Biden’s $1.9 trillion plan has understandably focused on the $1,400 payments to individuals, the increased unemployment benefits, the assistance to local governments, the support for accelerated vaccine rollout and the investments to get children back in schools. But there is so much more: food assistance, policies to keep families from becoming homeless, child care support, a $15 federal minimum wage and an expansion of the earned-income tax credit to fight poverty.

To me, the single most exciting element of the Biden proposal is one that has garnered little attention: a pathbreaking plan that would drastically cut child poverty.

It is a moral stain on America that almost one-third of people living in poverty are children, a higher share in poverty than any other age group.

So it’s exhilarating that Biden included in his plan a temporary expansion (I hope it will be made permanent) of the child tax credit in a way that would do more than any other single policy to reduce child poverty and make America more truly a land of opportunity. In effect, Biden is turning the child credit into something like the child allowances that are used around the world, from Canada to Australia, to reduce child poverty.

The Biden child poverty plan was previously offered as legislation backed by Senators Michael Bennet of Colorado and Sherrod Brown of Ohio, and a Columbia University analysis found that it would reduce child poverty in the United States by 45 percent. For Black children, it would reduce poverty by 52 percent, and for Native American children, 62 percent.

“This is the boldest vision laid out by an American president for fighting poverty, and child poverty in particular, in at least half a century,” said Luke Shaefer, a poverty expert at the University of Michigan.

Americans too often accept poverty or race gaps as hopeless and inevitable. In fact, the evidence suggests they are neither. Two examples:

• As Britain’s prime minister, Tony Blair cut child poverty by half with a strategy that included Biden-style child allowances.

• In Michigan, 41 percent of the early coronavirus deaths were among Black patients, even though Black residents make up only 14 percent of the state population. But Michigan then made a determined effort to address the inequity by bringing testing to Black neighborhoods and ensuring equal access to support programs, and Black residents are now underrepresented in Covid-19 fatalities, according to Dr. Joneigh Khaldun, the state’s chief medical officer.

Perhaps a third example is the New Deal itself. Results of Roosevelt’s boldness included Social Security, rural electrification, jobs programs, networks of hiking trails, the G.I. Bill of Rights and a 35-year burst of inclusive growth that arguably made the United States the richest country in the history of the world.

Yet for the last half-century, we mostly retreated. We overinvested in prisons and tax breaks for billionaires while underinvesting in education, public health and those left behind.

So we think of the United States as No. 1, but America ranks No. 28 worldwide in well-being of citizens, according to the Social Progress Index. And the United States is one of only three countries to have gone backward since the index began in 2011.

Americans are less likely to graduate from high school, more likely to die young, less safe from violence and less able to drink clean water than citizens in many other advanced countries. And then along came Covid-19 and magnified the disparities.

As Biden noted in his speech Thursday night, one in seven households in America now report that they don’t have enough food. Some 12 million children live in households that lack enough food.

I would hope that if any of us came across a single hungry child, we would pause and immediately offer help. But collectively we stroll by 12 million desperate children without stopping.

Yes, Biden’s proposal would be costly, but a major study from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine found that child poverty is even more expensive, costing America at least $800 billion a year in diminished productivity, higher crime and elevated medical costs.

Helping people is often harder than it looks. But it is difficult to overstate how much difference Biden’s child poverty plan would make for Americans, for economic growth, for the country’s international competitiveness — and, let’s acknowledge it, for the moral framework of the United States. In the long run, this would do more to advance American equality, opportunity and decency than almost anything else.

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A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 17, 2021, Section SR, Page 9 of the New York edition with the headline: When Biden Becomes … Rooseveltian!. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

To achieve a new New Deal, Democrats must learn from the old one

Similarities between the 1930s and today are hard to ignore

EDWIN AMENTA

JUNE 29, 2020 10:30AM (UTC)

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

As the United States reels from the COVID-19 pandemic and nationwide anti-racism protests, pundits from both sides of the political aisle have speculated that a new New Deal is in the offing.

It could happen. Crises, after all, often produce social policy gains, and the similarities between the 1930s and today are hard to ignore.

Unemployment has reached levels not seen since the 1930s, widening gaps in the social safety net. The infirm have been forced to work absent paid sick leave. The laid off have lost health coverage. And one in 5 households with young children faces food shortages.

Similarly, when Franklin D. Roosevelt took office unemployment was at 25% and the poverty rate among elderly citizens hovered over 70%. In 1932 World War I veterans demanding bonus payments were forcibly removed from Washington, D.C., by U.S. troops.

But these conditions don't automatically result in progressive social policy. Britain muddled through the Depression without social reform, and Germany turned fascist and militaristic, for example.

As a sociology professor who has written extensively about U.S. social policy, I think Roosevelt's New Deal teaches us that several developments have to coincide to generate a long-term social safety net.

Polls favor Democrats

First, public opinion has to shift drastically. In the 1930s, Gallup polls revealed strong support for government pensions for the elderly. Today public opinion has grown in favor of several social policy initiatives. About two-thirds of voters support a US$15 minimum wage, which was a minority view six years ago. A majority of Americans favor a single-payer health plan. That, too, was a minority view just a decade ago.

The crisis also has to unfold under the watch of a regime opposed to expanded social policies. Herbert Hoover opposed public relief — for the agricultural sector, the unemployed or the welfare state, in general — during the Depression. Instead, he ineffectively relied on mobilizing private efforts.

The Trump administration, likewise, has waged war on Obamacare. It wants a payroll tax cut, which would slash into Social Security and Medicare. And the Republican Senate opposes funding increases for food stamps and federal aid for states facing depleted budgets as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

The public must also blame the crisis on the party in power and reject that party at the polls. The Republicans lost their congressional majority in 1930, and Hoover suffered a crushing defeat in 1932, with Roosevelt carrying many congressional Democrats on his coattails.

American voters have yet to decide on Trump and the Republicans, but early signs point to rejection. Trump's approval rating remains well under water, while the popularity of most governors has skyrocketed. Trump trails Joe Biden by double digits in many presidential polls. Congressional ballots strongly favor Democrats. And Republican senators in Colorado, Arizona, North Carolina and Maine are in trouble, while their counterparts in Montana, Georgia, Kansas and Iowa seem vulnerable.

Longstanding political control

But three other things had to happen in the 1930s before New Deal reforms were implemented.

The first was a long-term shift in political control. Congress did not pass the Social Security and National Labor Relations Acts until Roosevelt's third year in office. And Congress did not approve the Fair Labor Standards Act, which created the minimum wage, until his sixth year in office.

Roosevelt's first two years were devoted largely to saving banks, encouraging industries to stabilize prices and wages and providing short-term poverty relief. If the Democrats had lost congressional support in 1934, major social reforms would have never seen the light.

Compare Roosevelt's — and the Democrats' — hold on power to former President Barack Obama's, and the prerequisites for extensive reform become clear. Yes, Obama helped pass the Affordable Care Act, but he spent much of his early first term seeking passage of the Recovery Act to counter the Great Recession. He had to abandon potential labor and environmental reforms after losing congressional control for good in 2010.

By contrast, the New Deal reform wave was possible only after congressional elections in 1934 gave Democrats an overwhelming majority, putting legislative control in the hands of liberals. Roosevelt won in a larger landslide in 1936, and congressional Democrats expanded their majority. The Social Security Act was amended twice, and the program we know today was established in 1950, after Democrats had won the presidency for the fifth consecutive time.

Mass mobilization

New Deal reforms also relied on the mobilization of activists. The 2-million-strong Townsend Plan — with 8,000 clubs across the country — placed intense pressure on Congress. This group demanded universal retirement benefits, about $3,700 per month in today's dollars. Workers struck for the right to bargain collectively. The unemployed organized and demanded benefits, too. Together, these efforts kept major reforms high on the political agenda.

Though unionization has witnessed steady declines for decades, the labor movement has enjoyed a sporadic resurgence of sorts recently, with major work stoppages — by United Auto Workers, United Teachers of Los Angeles and United Food and Commercial Workers — in the last couple of years. To implement major social policy changes, labor would need to remain active. The activists of Black Lives Matter movement would have to build on their nationwide protests and redouble organized efforts to transform police departments. And social policy would benefit from other reform-minded groups mobilizing as well.

Winning lasting social policy reform also required skillful policy crafting. The Social Security Act included taxes on payrolls and over time made its insurance program universal. Benefits for survivors and the disabled were slipped into the program's coverage in 1939.

However, other programs were mishandled. Roosevelt depleted considerable political capital on the Works Progress Administration, a program to provide temporary work to the unemployed, which was permanently "discharged" after a conservative Congress was elected in 1942. That political capital might have been spent on lasting reform.

If the Democrats win the presidency and control of Congress, they will need to adopt and improve universal programs with solid foundations, like Social Security. They also need to avoid squandering political capital on short-term fixes. Some easy first moves would be to lower the age for Medicare eligibility to 60, as Joe Biden proposes, and end the wage ceiling on Social Security taxes, while permanently boosting benefits by $200 per month.

Most of programs in Obama's Recovery Act were funded for only a year or two. Under new Democratic rule, grassroots groups — focused on environmental change, racial justice and gun safety, for example — will need to redouble organizing efforts to keep political leaders' feet to the fire, lending urgency to public opinion for reform.

The lessons from the old New Deal suggest that a new one is possible. But Democrats will need to control Congress, policymakers will need to look beyond the current crises, and activists will need to keep the pressure on to establish lasting structural change.

Edwin Amenta, Professor of Sociology, University of California, Irvine

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

LINKS TO CURRENT ARTICLES AND EDITORIALS IN THE NEWS AND MEDIA WHICH MENTION FDR

https://www.salon.com/2020/09/11/trump-youre-no-fdr-or-winston-churchill--but-youre-a-lot-like-charles-lindbergh/

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/18/opinion/coronavirus-unemployment-youth.html?

action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/05/joe-biden-presidential-plans.html

https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-socialism-20190213-story.html

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-03-12/trump-should-have-learned-from-fdr-s-fear-itself-speech

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fdr-and-the-recreation-of-america/

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/02/opinion/sunday/coronavirus-new-deal-ubi.html

http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1906802_1906838,00.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/12/opinion/fdr-warren-2020.html

https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/interview-nigel-hamilton-fdr

https://lasvegassun.com/news/2020/mar/08/democrats-need-another-fdr/

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/20/roosevelts-new-deal

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/15/opinion/coronavirus-trump-hoover.html?action=click&block=associated_collection_recirc&impression_id=423309560&index=1&pgtype=Article&region=footer

FDR LIBRARY FOR MORE INFORMATION ON FDR :

https://www.fdrlibrary.org/fdr-biography

KEN BURNS FILM THE ROOSEVELTS ON PBS: EXCELLENT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Roosevelts: An Intimate History chronicles the lives of Theodore, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, three members of the most prominent and influential family in American politics. It is the first time in a major documentary television series that their individual stories have been interwoven into a single narrative. It is an intimate human story about love, betrayal, family loyalty, personal courage and the conquest of fear.

https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-roosevelts