David Woolner

Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow
Roosevelt Institute Profile

Recent Posts by David Woolner

  • Romney's 47 Percent Remarks Reflect the Mentality FDR Fought Against

    Sep 20, 2012David Woolner

    Romney's comments may spark a widespread backlash against the kind of contempt for the poor that FDR once overcame.

    But here is the challenge to our democracy: In this nation I see tens of millions of its citizens—a substantial part of its whole population—who at this very moment are denied the greater part of what the very lowest standards of today call the necessities of life…

    I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.

    Romney's comments may spark a widespread backlash against the kind of contempt for the poor that FDR once overcame.

    But here is the challenge to our democracy: In this nation I see tens of millions of its citizens—a substantial part of its whole population—who at this very moment are denied the greater part of what the very lowest standards of today call the necessities of life…

    I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.

    But it is not in despair that I paint you that picture. I paint it for you in hope—because the nation, seeing and understanding the injustice in it, proposes to paint it out. We are determined to make every American citizen the subject of his country’s interest and concern; and we will never regard any faithful law-abiding group within our borders as superfluous. The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little. - Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1937

    Mitt Romney’s callous remarks about the 47 percent of Americans who “pay no income tax,” are “dependent on government,” see themselves as “victims,” and will never “take personal responsibility… for their lives,” have been seized upon by both conservative and liberal commentators as the strongest indication yet that Romney is out of touch with the American people. They have also proved to be something of an embarrassment for fellow members of his party who are running for office. In Massachusetts, for example, U.S. Senator Scott Brown told the Boston Globe that Romney’s remarks did not represent the way Brown viewed the world. “As someone who grew up in tough circumstances, I know that being on public assistance is not a spot that anyone wants to be in.” Similar sentiments were echoed by a number of other Republican candidates, like Senator Dean Heller of Nevada, who told Politico that as the son of an auto mechanic and a school cook—with five brothers and sisters—he did not "view the world the same way” Romney does. In New Mexico, meanwhile, Republican Governor Susana Martinez responded by noting that her state had “a lot of people that are at the poverty level…but they count as much as anybody else.”

    Romney’s remarks have also sparked a good deal of interest in just who the 47 percent are and what this figure means. Ironically, the net result this furor may be to inject a more elevated discussion into the nation’s political discourse about one of the most important issues facing the country: the alarming rise in the number of Americans who have joined the ranks of the poor.

    According to official statistics just released by the Census Bureau, the number of Americans living in poverty reached 48.5 million people in 2011, the highest number in 53 years. And while the percentage of Americans living in poverty finally appears to be falling from its high last year of 15.9 percent, it is important to remember that the number of “near poor”—those individuals and families who struggle with incomes just above the poverty line—has topped 51 million. That means the total number of Americans living below or just above the poverty line now stands at just under 100 million—roughly one-third of the population.

    Given these statistics, and the growing number of Americans who have retired and are living off of Social Security (which the retirees have paid for through payroll taxes), is it any wonder that approximately 47 percent of the American populace pays no federal income tax? Of course we should not forget that most of these individuals do pay payroll taxes as well as state and local taxes, not to mention sales taxes, which are in place in 45 states.

    A far more important question is how it is that the richest country in the world now finds itself with roughly one-third of its population living in such dire economic circumstances. According to Mr. Romney, these 100 million Americans are stuck in or near poverty because they have refused to take “personal responsibility and care for their own lives.” As such, they are quite happy to live on government handouts, firm in their belief that they are “entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.”

    Quite apart from the debate over health care, one would have thought that access to food and shelter is not something that a civilized society in the 21st century would deny its most vulnerable citizens—and when pressed Mr. Romney has backed away a bit from such an extreme stance. But the undeniable disdain in his comments for “those people” whom he has characterized as freeloaders who regard themselves as “victims” has sparked a strong negative reaction, even, as noted, from many members of his own party.

    This is welcome news, for it may portend the first glimmer of hope that the winner-take-all, you’re on your-own philosophy of the extreme right is being undermined by a far more compassionate and realistic view of how a modern society is supposed to function; a society where we can all agree that government has a responsibility to provide the average citizen with a basic level of economic security and equal access to economic opportunity. This would include policies that ensure that all Americans have equal access to education and affordable health care and where the focus of the debate about the size and role of government would center how best to use government—not eliminate it—in our fight to eradicate poverty.

    Seventy years ago, in the midst of an even worse economic crisis, Franklin Roosevelt faced a number of critics who characterized the world in a manner that was quite similar to Governor Romney’s. “You know their reasoning,” FDR said. “They say that in the competition of life for the good things of life; ‘Some are successful because they have better brains or are more efficient; the wise, the swift and' the strong are able to outstrip their fellowmen. That is nature itself, and it is just too bad if some get left behind.’” But, he went on:

    It is that attitude which leads such people to give little thought to the one-third of our population which I have described as being ill-fed, ill-clad and ill-housed. They say, "I am not my brother's keeper"—and they "pass by on the other side." Most of them are honest people. Most of them consider themselves excellent citizens.

    But this nation will never permanently get on the road to recovery if we leave the methods and the processes of recovery to those who owned the Government of the United States from 1921 to 1933.

    In Roosevelt’s day, those who “owned the Government” from 1921 to 1933 promoted the same type of laissez-faire policies that Governor Romney and Congressman Ryan embrace and which contributed to the economic collapse President Obama inherited in 2009. By the mid-1930s, however, most Americans found themselves in agreement with FDR’s comment that “we have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics.” They also concurred with his view that “out of the collapse of a prosperity whose builders boasted their practicality has come the conviction that in the long run economic morality pays.”

    Perhaps Mr. Romney has done us all a favor, for his apparent indifference to the plight of “those people” who make up the 47 percent of the American population has forced a good many of his fellow Republicans to admit that government does have a role to play in ensuring we live in a decent society. They may not agree with the Democrats on how just how large a role government should play, but their tacit acknowledgement that government can and must be part of the solution to the nation’s problems is a welcome change from the ceaseless and vacuous claim of the far right that government stands at the root of all our problems.

    Who knows; in the long run, it may even lead to the moderation of the Republican Party, something which all Americans, even the 47 percent, would welcome with open arms. 

    David Woolner is a Senior Fellow and Hyde Park Resident Historian for the Roosevelt Institute. He is currently writing a book entitled Cordell Hull, Anthony Eden and the Search for Anglo-American Cooperation, 1933-1938.

    Read more

    Share This

  • Katyn Documents Recall the Harsh Realities of War, But “New Evidence” is Not New

    Sep 13, 2012David Woolner

    Lack of research has led the press to treat documents that have been public for 40 years as breaking news.

    Lack of research has led the press to treat documents that have been public for 40 years as breaking news.

    Earlier this week, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) released over a thousand pages of documents relating to one of the most horrific events of the Second World War: the massacre of thousands of Polish military officers and other leading Polish elites by the Soviet Secret Police in May and June 1940. The victims—who today are estimated to number just under 22,000—were captured by the Red Army in the fall of 1939, when the Soviet Union, under the terms of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, invaded eastern Poland just weeks after the Nazi war machine launched the attack on Poland that initiated the Second World War. The Poles were secretly murdered on the order of Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Politburo in a brutal effort to eliminate any opposition to Soviet rule.

    According to widespread press reports, the recently released documents provide “new evidence” that Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill—who only learned of the crime after the mass graves containing the bodies of the murdered Poles were found by the Germans in April of 1943—“hushed up” Soviet guilt for the crime out of fear that revealing the truth would damage their delicate wartime relationship with Joseph Stalin.

    This basic assessment of what happened in the spring of 1943 is correct. Both Roosevelt and Churchill were most anxious to avoid doing anything at that moment—when the Allies had yet to launch a Second Front in Europe—that might lead to a breakdown in the critical wartime alliance with the Soviets. It is also true that by the summer of 1943, the widespread initial suspicion that the Nazis had committed the atrocity and were merely using it as a propaganda tool against the Allies had given way to the view that the Soviets may indeed have been guilty of the crime. It is with respect to the latter point that the release of the documents provides the most important “new evidence.” Here, the fact that two American POWs who were taken to the site of the graves by the Nazis were able to send coded messages back to U.S. military intelligence in the summer of 1943 is significant. For their report that the Nazi allegations in their opinion were “substantially correct” provides additional evidence that the U.S. government was in possession of credible information about Soviet guilt within a few months of the discovery of the massacre.

    But the notion that this represents a major “new discovery” bolstered by other “new evidence” that the NARA release has provided is something of an exaggeration. Many recent press accounts, for example, report that the released documents include “secret” communications between Churchill and Roosevelt which show the determination of the two leaders not to let the charges of Soviet guilt by the Nazis and by the Polish government-in-exile disrupt the wartime alliance with Stalin. The implication is that this is new information, but the wartime communication between Churchill and Roosevelt was declassified in 1972, and has been freely available to scholars at the FDR Presidential Library ever since. It has also been published, most notably in Warren F. Kimball’s Churchill and Roosevelt: The Complete Correspondence, which first came out in 1984.

    Moreover, the specific exchanges between Roosevelt and Stalin that the press has reported as “new” have also been available for decades. Like the Roosevelt-Churchill correspondence, these documents were also declassified and released at the FDR Presidential Library in 1972, and some of them were available much earlier. The April 26 exchange between FDR and Stalin, for example, was first published in 1963 as part of the widely used State Department series Foreign Relations of the United States Diplomatic Papers. Most significant, however, is the claim by the BBC and other news outlets that “among the new evidence” is a report written by Owen O’Malley, the British Ambassador to the Polish-government-in-exile, which Churchill sent to Roosevelt on August 13, 1943. In this report, O’Malley notes “there is now available a good deal of negative evidence, the cumulative effect of which is to throw serious doubt on Russian disclaimers of responsibility for the massacre.” Again, the implication is that this is a major new revelation that changes our understanding of this tragic episode, when in fact this document, like others just mentioned, has been available at the FDR library since the early 1970s and is also published in Kimball’s Complete Correspondence.

    What is unsettling here is the unfiltered and unsophisticated manner in which serious news organizations reported this story. It appears that the wartime files released by the National Archives in Washington contain a good deal of duplicate information that is held in the FDR Presidential Library, which is also part of the National Archives and Records Administration. This is not unusual, as it is often the case that government documents can be found in a number of different locations. It is also true that the discovery of the coded messages sent by the American POWs adds a significant new piece of evidence to the history of what became known as the “Katyn Massacre.” But the release of this new evidence does not change our fundamental understanding of the wartime aspects of this horrific story, and most of what the press has reported as “new”—at least with respect to the wartime records—has been available and written about for roughly 40 years. Had the press done its homework, or possessed a greater understanding of the Second World War, a more accurate description of what the release of these documents tells us would have emerged, and along with it, a deeper appreciation for the harsh realities faced by those—like the Polish people—caught up in the cruel vagaries of total war.

    David Woolner is a Senior Fellow and Hyde Park Resident Historian for the Roosevelt Institute. He is currently writing a book entitled Cordell Hull, Anthony Eden and the Search for Anglo-American Cooperation, 1933-1938.

    Read more

    Share This

  • A New “Century of the Common Man”: Bringing Freedom From Want Back to Foreign Policy

    Sep 4, 2012David Woolner

    Foreign policy shouldn't forget the important role of economic development.

    Foreign policy shouldn't forget the important role of economic development.

    The people, in their millennial and revolutionary march toward manifesting here on earth the dignity that is in every human soul, hold as their credo the Four Freedoms enunciated by President Roosevelt in his message to Congress on January 6, 1941. These Four Freedoms are the very core of the revolution for which the United Nations have taken their stand. We who live in the United States may think there is nothing very revolutionary about freedom of religion, freedom of expression, and freedom from the fear of secret police. But when we begin to think about the significance of freedom from want for the average man, then we know that the revolution of the past 150 years has not been completed, either here in the United States or in any other nation in the world. We know that this revolution cannot stop until freedom from want has actually been attained.

    …Some have spoken of the "American Century:" I say that the century on which we are entering—the century which will come out of this war—can be and must be the century of the common man. – Henry A. Wallace, 1942

    In his recent address to the American Legion, and in numerous other pronouncements he has made about U.S. foreign policy, Mitt Romney has called for the establishment of “an American Century.” In such a century, he argues, America must have “the strongest economy and the strongest military in the world” in part because “without American leadership, without clarity of American purpose and resolve, the world becomes a far more dangerous place, and liberty and prosperity would surely be among the first casualties.”

    The notion of the establishment of an “American Century” is not new. Such sentiments have been around since the establishment of the Republic, but the phrase itself gained common currency during World War II when Henry Luce, the founder, publisher, and editor of Time, Life, and Fortune Magazine, published a widely read and somewhat controversial article under the same title in February 1941.

    To Luce, the American century meant “a sharing with all people” the U.S. Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, and Constitution. He also insisted that the U.S. must share “our magnificent industrial products [and] technical skills.” He had little doubt that the world would accept American leadership because, unlike 19th century England and other imperialist powers, American prestige was based on the world community’s faith in “the good intentions” and “ultimate strength and intelligence of the American people.”

    It is important to remember that Luce’s call for the establishment of an “American Century” was inspired in part by his backing of FDR’s call for greater U.S. support for the British struggle against the Nazis, especially through the establishment of the program known as Lend-Lease, which was passed by Congress a few weeks after his article was published. It is also important to remember that in doing so, Luce had joined FDR and other internationalists in trying to kill off American isolationism (or what perhaps may be more accurately defined as a policy of non-intervention) once and for all.

    Viewed in this light, Luce’s call for the establishment of an American Century renders his but one voice in a growing chorus calling for greater U.S. participation—and leadership—in the mid-20th century struggle against the twin evils of fascism in Europe and militarism in Asia. But Luce’s emphasis on the promotion of “an American Century,” with its implicit suggestion that the United States should impose its values on the world, made some of his contemporaries uncomfortable, and to a certain extent distinguished his vision of American leadership from those of FDR and other key members of the Roosevelt administration.

    In sharp contrast to Luce, for example, FDR’s vice president, Henry A. Wallace, in what is widely regarded as one of the most important speeches to come out of the war, called not for the establishment of an American century, but rather for the establishment of “the century of the common man.” His was a century where “no nation will have the God-given right to exploit other nations,” where “older nations will have the privilege to help younger nations get started on the path to industrialization,” and where there “must be neither military nor economic imperialism.”

    Wallace also insisted that “when the time of peace comes, the citizen will again have a duty, the supreme duty of sacrificing the lesser interest for the greater interest of the general welfare.” For, like FDR, Wallace firmly believed that above all else the Second World War was caused in large part by the global economic crisis that brought on the Great Depression and the concomitant rise of fascism. It is for this reason that both he and President Roosevelt placed such a great emphasis on the need to rid the world of poverty and despair. Viewed from this perspective, FDR’s call for “freedom from want” and Wallace’s call for “the century of the common man” take on a much greater meaning and weight than Luce’s call for the establishment of the “American Century.” To promote American values and institutions was not enough. To truly make the United States secure—even at a time when the United States possessed unparalleled military power—the American people and government would have to concern themselves with the basic health and well-being of all peoples, “everywhere in the world.”

    Unfortunately, since the onset of the “War on Terror,” U.S. foreign policy has largely turned away from this emphasis on humanitarian assistance and instead become increasingly militarized. As a result, we have de-emphasized the role of international development and adherence to the rule of law in our foreign policy and in the process have placed an enormous burden on America’s armed forces, who are now expected to not only engage in combat, but also to engage in nation-building—a task traditionally carried out under the auspices of the State Department.

    Moreover, thanks to our relentless drive toward what historian Andrew Bacevich has called our “mindless pursuit of military supremacy,” we have neglected developing a more nuanced and sophisticated approach to the international challenges America faces in the world today. This emphasis on the pursuit of military—as opposed to “soft “—power has in many respects reduced our influence on world events and ironically rendered the United States something of a bystander in the drive for human rights and democracy in Egypt and other parts of the Arab world.

    This is unfortunate, for after 10 years of engagement in the “war on terror,” strong evidence has emerged showing that one of the root causes of contemporary terrorism remains economic deprivation. Equally important, the same empirical data suggests that the widespread use of military force as the primary instrument in the American struggle against terrorism has given the most at-risk populations a greater motivation toward terrorist acts—the same economically deprived populations that would benefit substantially from an increase in U.S. foreign aid.

    Yet the use of foreign aid in the execution of American foreign policy is rarely mentioned by either political party (one suspects because of the widespread misconception that approximately 25 percent of the federal budget goes to foreign aid, when the actual figure is less than 1 percent). Instead, we hear endless calls for the maintenance and expansion of American military power, based on the idea that “when America is strong,” as Mr. Romney says, “the world is safer.”

    Both Franklin Roosevelt and Henry Wallace would surely agree with this statement. But they also understood that the development of military power and the promotion of freedom abroad are not enough to render the United State secure. As FDR observed in his Second Bill of Rights speech, the long years of depression and war brought us to “a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. ‘Necessitous men are not free men.’ People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.”

    Surely the same thing could be said today about the social and economic conditions that have helped give rise to the religious and political extremism that stands at the root of our struggle against terrorism. If this indeed is the case, should we not be placing a greater emphasis on the alleviation of poverty, the promotion of education, and the need to foster economic self-reliance in the execution of U.S. foreign policy? Instead of promoting an “American Century,” wouldn’t it be better to promote the “century of the common man”?

    David Woolner is a Senior Fellow and Hyde Park Resident Historian for the Roosevelt Institute. He is currently writing a book entitled Cordell Hull, Anthony Eden and the Search for Anglo-American Cooperation, 1933-1938.

    Read more

    Share This

  • Middle Class Decline is a National Emergency. Where's Our FDR?

    Aug 23, 2012David Woolner

    In the 1930s, the president and Congress responded to the economic crisis with immediate action. Why haven't today's policymakers done the same?

    In the 1930s, the president and Congress responded to the economic crisis with immediate action. Why haven't today's policymakers done the same?

    Sometimes I get bored sitting in Washington hearing certain people talk and talk about all that Government ought not to do— people who got all they wanted from Government back in the days when the financial institutions and the railroads were being bailed out in 1933, bailed out by the Government. It is refreshing to go out through the country and feel the common wisdom that the time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.

    They want the financial budget balanced. But they want the human budget balanced as well. - Franklin D. Roosevelt, October 1937

    A recent study by the Pew Research Center has confirmed what millions of Americans have realized for some time now: that the middle class has endured its worst decade since World War II. With declining home values, falling wages, and skyrocketing higher education costs, the median wealth for the middle class fell by 28 percent over the past decade, while the wealth of higher income families rose slightly. The same sad story holds true for middle class incomes, as government data now shows that we have finally managed to break the half-century-long streak that saw inflation-adjusted family income rise in every decade between 1950 and 2000, but not in the decade ending in 2010. Thanks to these and other economic trends, the overall size of the American middle class has also shrunk, down to just 51 percent of the population as compared to 61 percent of the population four decades ago.

    One might assume that these alarming statistics—and the fact that the U.S. unemployment rate has been above 8 percent for more than three years—would lead to something like a crisis atmosphere in Washington, a recognition that this is no ordinary economic downturn, but a great national emergency made all the more worrisome by the onset of the worst drought in more than 50 years. But instead of acting, members of the House and Senate have elected to go on their usual five-week summer recess, confirming in the minds of most Americans that the principal blame for their current troubles and for the decline of the middle class lies with Congress.

    Roughly three-quarters of a century ago, in similar circumstances, the reactions of both the public and the government was exactly the opposite. From the day he assumed office, FDR identified the collapse of the U.S. economy as an unprecedented national emergency, not unlike the onset of war, that must be countered by “action and action now.” Indeed, his first move as president was to call Congress back into an “emergency session” that launched the most productive period in U.S. legislative history—15 major pieces of legislation in 100 days, including such “emergency” measures as the 1933 Banking Act, the Glass-Steagall Act, and the Truth in Securities Act, all of which helped provide the regulatory structure needed for the U.S. banking and financial sector to thrive for decades to come.

    But FDR’s characterization of the economic crisis as an emergency did not end there. He would continue to describe the nation’s woes in the 1930s as a “national emergency” and would continue to demand the cooperation of Congress in meeting both the short-term and long-term challenges that the nation faced as it climbed its way out of the Great Depression. It was this spirit to act—in both parties—that gave us the major provisions of the New Deal and that laid the basis for that remarkable 50-year period of expansion of the middle class that may now have sadly come to an end.

    Given the level of inactivity on Capitol Hill, it would appear that the steady and sharp decline in the size and economic wherewithal of the American middle class does not represent a crisis to the members of Congress. But for the millions of Americans out of work or underemployed, the millions of Americans who now face the very real prospect that they will not be able to attain the same level of economic prosperity as their parents, this is no garden-variety recession. It is a deep structural decline that may forever change the way they and their children lead their lives.

    In short, we remain in the midst of a very real national emergency that demands the same sort of response taken by the president and Congress more than three-quarters of a century ago: “action and action now.” Until Congress recognizes, this, however, one suspects that little will change, except that the long, steady decline of the American middle class and American way of life will continue.

    David Woolner is a Senior Fellow and Hyde Park Resident Historian for the Roosevelt Institute. He is currently writing a book entitled Cordell Hull, Anthony Eden and the Search for Anglo-American Cooperation, 1933-1938.

    Read more

    Share This

  • The Return of the "Hear-Nothing, See-Nothing, Do-Nothing" Congress

    Aug 2, 2012David Woolner

    As the 112th Congress prepares to go on recess, its record pales in comparison to what the 74th Congress achieved in the 1930s.

    For twelve years this Nation was afflicted with hear-nothing, see-nothing, do-nothing Government. The Nation looked to Government but the Government looked away... Powerful influences strive today to restore that kind of government with its doctrine that that Government is best which is most indifferent. - Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1936

    As the 112th Congress prepares to go on recess, its record pales in comparison to what the 74th Congress achieved in the 1930s.

    For twelve years this Nation was afflicted with hear-nothing, see-nothing, do-nothing Government. The Nation looked to Government but the Government looked away... Powerful influences strive today to restore that kind of government with its doctrine that that Government is best which is most indifferent. - Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1936

    A number of recent articles have pointed out that by most measures, the 112th Congress is not merely the most unpopular Congress in history; it is also the least productive. As both the New York Times and the Washington Post have pointed out of late, this Congress would much rather engage in political posturing and ideological brinkmanship than in passing laws that address the current economic crisis.

    What a contrast the 112th Congress represents when its record is placed against the 74th, the Congress that was in session at the close of FDR’s first term. It was the 74th Congress that was largely responsible for what historians call the Second New Deal. This included the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act, which provided the funding needed to establish the Works Progress Administration (WPA) that would provide millions of Americans with skilled jobs building the nation’s economic infrastructure; the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act, which encouraged farmers to preserve one of our nation’s most precious resources, our topsoil, in the midst of one of the worst droughts in history; the Rural Electrification Act, which provided jobs to thousands and “wired” the country by bringing the benefits of electric power to millions of rural Americans; the Public Utility Act, which was designed to reduce the cost of electric power by regulating the utility industry and forcing the break-up of large-scale power monopolies; the National Labor Relations Act, which enshrined the right of workers to form unions and engage in collective bargaining and established the National Labor Relations Board, which helps us settle labor disputes to this day; and finally, the Social Security Act, which gave us not only Social Security but also unemployment insurance.

    What many Americans may not be aware of is the long-term impact that these congressional acts have had on future generations. As I pointed out last week, the drought we are experiencing today would no doubt be much worse, and may have even resulted in the rise of a new Dust Bowl, had Congress and the government not moved so aggressively in the 1930s to reduce soil erosion and plant millions of trees. The jobs provided by the WPA helped preserve the critical skills of our workforce and vastly expanded the infrastructure needed to grow the U.S. economy. When the Rural Electrification Act was passed, roughly 90 percent of all the farms in the United States were without power; by the end of the New Deal that number was cut to 10 percent. The passage of the National Labor Relations Act had a profound impact on the level of union membership and wages in the years to come and helped establish the post-war middle class. And it boggles the mind to think of where we might be today, in the midst of the current economic crisis, had we not had Social Security or unemployment insurance. It is also important to remember that many of these acts were initiated by members of Congress in response to the crisis the country faced in the 1930s and that each of these laws received significant support from members of both political parties.

    As we approach the 77th anniversary of the passage of the Social Security Act on August 14, perhaps instead of going on recess, the members of Congress should call themselves back into session. With the economy sputtering and millions of Americans still suffering the agony of unemployment, why not take a chance and pass President Obama’s jobs bill, or at the very least establish the long-term funding needed to rebuild and expand our nation’s crumbling economic infrastructure?

    After all, more than three-quarters of a century ago while running for office in the midst of a similar crisis, Franklin Roosevelt was bold enough to recognize that in the face of such an economic calamity the country was ready to try “bold, persistent experimentation.” That it was perfectly acceptable to “take a method and try it: if it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all try something” for the “millions who are in want will not stand by silently forever while the things to satisfy their needs are in easy reach.”

    David Woolner is a Senior Fellow and Hyde Park Resident Historian for the Roosevelt Institute. He is currently writing a book entitled Cordell Hull, Anthony Eden and the Search for Anglo-American Cooperation, 1933-1938.

     

    Congress image via Shutterstock.com.

    Read more

    Share This

Pages