How Successful Was The New Deal Dbq

First came the government to finance his first New Deal, Roosevelt had introduced higher taxes for the rich. They felt that he had betrayed his class and he was expelled from his social club for letting down “his people”. Roosevelt’s response was typically blunt claiming that the policies he was pursuing would tread on the toes of the few while the majority benefited. The New Deal also faced a lot of opposition from the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court took its stance from a legal viewpoint and in 1935 it effectively declared the National Recovery Administration illegal. In the following year it declared the Agricultural Adjustment Act unconstitutional thus killing off the AAA. The point made by the Supreme Court was that any efforts made to help farmers etc. should come at a state level and not federal level and that these parts of the New Deal went against the powers given to the states by the Constitution.

Then there was also the other sides of politics.

Criticism of the Roosevelt administration ranged from arguments that its policies would harm business and economic recovery to charges that it was subverting democracy. Some labeled the New Deal as fascism, although it is important to remember that at the time, fascism did not connote the tragedy of World War II but rather an ideology of authoritarian nationalism and planned economy, associated most often with Benito Mussolini's Italy. Others saw the New Deal as a manifestation of socialism or communism. The left accused Roosevelt of empowering big business while the right opposed the policies that regulated business and expanded workers' rights. FDR and his vision attracted critics from all sides of the political spectrum who often labeled the New Deal using the same terms but meaning very different

things.

A big group was the political left. Roosevelt attracted as much criticism from the left as he did from the right. When Norman Thomas ran as the presidential candidate of the Socialist Party of America in the 1932 election, his platform reminded people more of the later New Deal agenda than the New Deal plan announced at the time by presidential candidate Roosevelt. Thomas promised support for the unemployed and the elderly, federal relief and jobs programs, repeal of Prohibition, and national medical insurance, but he gained very limited support. Although Roosevelt's New Deal introduced programs corresponding with the 1932 socialist proposals, Thomas and his colleagues criticized Roosevelt's attempts as fixing or reforming capitalism rather than radically changing the existing economic order. Roosevelt's ambiguous relationship with business, which conservatives perceived as too restrictive and focused on pro-labor initiatives while leftists thought he was leaving too much power in the hands of business leaders, has also provoked much criticism on the left. While not really an opponent of Roosevelt, a socialist writer, Upton Sinclair , popularized a program known as End Poverty in California (EPIC) that Roosevelt eventually considered to be too radical. EPIC called for public works projects, tax reform, and guaranteed pensions. It also proposed that unused farmland should be given to the unemployed who could establish cooperative farms. Many farmers and unemployed workers supported EPIC, although Sinclair lost the governorship of California in 1934. Though Roosevelt did not endorse Sinclair, the program influenced later New Deal policies.

These are some of the political events and political view of the people and how they view Roosevelt. And the government that are so controversial to many people.