Not good enough?

What isn't good enough?

I can't tell you want you want to hear, Ryan... I'm sorry. You want me to say that "New Deal Lite" would fix today's problems because New Deal "fixed" the Great Depression... but there is no need for a New Deal Lite, because nothing about the Great Depression has repeated. One out of every four Americans are not out of work, and they haven't been out of work for the last 36 months without support or assistance (as they were in 1933). Yes, lots of people are out of work... but more than 98% of them (including ME) had the resource of UI to fall back on for at least 52 weeks, and many now have had the assistance for 99 weeks. This country hasn't suffered 7 continuous years of devastating drought, which then contributed to a farm failure rate of national proportions, and forced a "migration" movement immortalized in American "classic" literature (The Grapes of Wrath).

Your insistence that my position must remain the same for both 1933 and 2010 is simply false... the situations are NOT the same, the needs and causes are NOT similar, and the "relief, recovery and reform" that New Deal brought to 1933 is already in place through government regulations, policies and programs. No need to reinvent FDIC to protect depositor's funds and savings... its still there. No need to redraw the design of SEC to regulate and secure American market investments and prevent free-fall fiscal failure... already up and running, thanks! We don't need to provide employee/employer insurance against wage loss due to unemployment... UI already has that covered. What about elderly medical needs? SSI... right. Mortgage failure insurance? PMI... we got it.

THESE are the legacy of New Deal that I feel have prevented a return of Great Depression Era suffering over the last 80 years, by providing security and protection for investors, depositors, and employees against hardships and failure. We don't need to revisit New Deal today, because New Deal has already prevented a repeat of the Great Depression.

Your analogy that if it worked once, it would work again is flawed at many, many levels. In Dec of 1941, the US was attacked by a foreign enemy who killed, without provocation, 2,402 Americans. Within 24 hours, the US was in a "declared war", and within 7 months, had committed itself to turning 65% of its production capacity to a complete "war footing". Rationing was in effect in less than 60 days, and continued for the next four years to limit what the American consumer could use, buy, where they could go, and who they could correspond with. That war ended with the use of nuclear weapons to utterly break the will of the enemy to fight anymore, and to save American lives in the process.

In Sept of 2001, we were attacked by a foreign enemy who killed, without provocation, 2,977 Americans. We have been in nearly a constant state of "war" since that time, have spent hundreds of billions of dollars fighting across the globe, with no reasonable end in sight nine years later. Why has no rationing been applied? Why no draft? Where are the nuclear weapons being used to utterly end the enemy's will to fight and save American lives? Why not employ the same measures that worked 60 years earlier?

Because it wasn't necessary. The situations were not the same. Circumstances dictated a different course of action. The analogy doesn't work.

"And affording (read: your feeling comfortable with) the government in power the latitude to fundamentally transform their own power structure based on their own interpretation of what a "crisis" is rather then being bound by the limits of the Constitution is frightening to me. It's how one ends up supporting internment camps for American citizens."

Are you referring to FDR, or to George W Bush, who, in response to 9/11, increased the size and scope of the Executive Branch of the Federal Government by 175%? Do you mean "New Deal", or do you mean the Patriot Act, which gave unprecedented (literally) scope to the government's ability to monitor, regulate and limit American citizen's activities in their business and private lives? Both the Patriot Act and Homeland Security were in response to a national crisis, and both were unprecedented due to the unprecedented nature of the crisis they were in response to... yet you defend both adamantly. Why am I mocked for saying that New Deal regulation, or the implementation of SEC, FDIC, SSI, or any other lasting agency of the New Deal era, did exactly the same, and benefited the nation far more than they adversely effected it?

Again, I have repeatedly said that high taxes coupled with deficit spending hurt the New Deal effort... that has been established as FACT for a long time. My argument is that not EVERYTHING accomplished or achieved in New Deal was a "failure" and that the fact that no depression has occurred since 1929 is more than significant... it is telling proof that government CAN ensure safety and security in economic matters through regulation. I do not deny that a minimum should be maintained... but unless you want to revert to the same level of "free market" system that allowed the Crash to happen in the first place, what more can be said? No President, before or since, has seen a higher GDP growth rate than FDR (more than 8% annually) over the course of his first two terms... and ONLY unemployment remained higher than pre-1929 levels. Eisenhower had an unemployment level of more than 10% in 1957, too... meaning his "New Deal" administration was a failure, too, right? What about Nixon's rate of 10.9% in the 70s? Another failure of a "New Deal" President?

Reagan "fixed" the Carter Recession... not by deregulating the markets or reducing the Federal budget (he did neither), but by lowering taxes and slowing the growth of government. Short of keeping more money in the public's pockets, he did nothing to reduce the scope of government's access into our private lives... the Department of Education remained (after he promised to eliminate it), the Federal Highway Commission remained (after he stated that it was a State issue, not a Federal one), the national speed limit remained, the curbs and regulations on speculation pricing for vital commodities remained or were strengthened... yet he is not shouted down as a "Big Government" supporter... but he was obviously a "Not-Quite-So-Big Government" supporter.

So, again, I ask: Where's YOUR cut-off? Why isn't the Louisiana Purchase listed on your list of "un-Constitutional" power-grabs? Or the Indian Removal Act? Or Reconstruction? Or Prohibition? Or Smoot-Hawley (which you sent a text to me about as a "New Deal" issue that Glenn Beck was railing about, but Smoot Hawley was signed into law in 1930 by Hoover... three years before anyone even heard of New Deal)? Why isn't there concern and worry over the Patriot Act? Homeland Security? ALL of these were unprecedented efforts to radically increase the scope of government's intervention in what had previously been seen as "private" rather than public matters... but they are acceptable increases in power and authority to you. Why? Because they protect and safeguard American interests, now and in the future? Can't you say the exact same thing about FDIC, SSI, SEC, and any other lasting program of the New Deal era?

One more thing:

Much of your frustration at my position seems to be centered on "work programs". I defend the CCC and the WPA and other Federal work programs from a multiple-perspective position, while you look at it only from the perspective of what the country "knew" in 1932 (meaning BEFORE New Deal). I can show that immediate benefit was gained by putting millions of unemployed to work under the authority of the Federal government because it gave immediate relief and recovery benefits to those workers, even if only temporarily. You see it as a drain on resources and an artificial crutch in the short term (which is a legitimate position to take, I do not deny that at all). However, I think it is impossible to look at the history of America since that time and not see the benefits that came with those efforts. We simply could not have accomplished as much as we did in the 40's if we hadn't made the efforts to build or improve infrastructure in the 30's.

The same is true of Ike's "Federal Interstate Highway Program"... a New Deal program if ever there was one, built on the concern that the US would need to move troops and supplies across country and evacuate civilians from urban centers in the event of a nuclear war with the USSR. Utterly unfounded on the basis of what we knew to be true then (and that is what its detractors in the Senate kept harping about, not my opinion)... but that has proven to be one of the greatest boosts to American prosperity and "freedom" in the last 100 years. If you deny the reality that TVA played a vital role in the winning of WWII simply because it was a public works program that was initiated before anyone even suspected that WWII was going to break out, then the value of the Federal Interstate Highway System must also be denied, for the very same reason. Don't you agree? How can the interstates not be seen as simply another monument to the failure of "Federal work programs" that did nothing but put America's unemployed to work at the taxpayer's expense in a temporary capacity, if we don't look at the long-term benefits that the project brought to the nation?

I do not see my position as having changed at all since this debate began. Not everything about New Deal worked, and some of it was determined to be un-Constitutional and was struck down (according to the processes instituted by the Founder's themselves). I simply do not agree that the entire effort and all resulting effects of New Deal are failures, either then or now. We are a better nation having learned what we did during and after the Depression Era, and we have kept what worked from New Deal, and allowed that which didn't to expire or be repealed. To the best of my knowledge, that is how things are supposed to work in this country, and if enough evidence exists that something remains in place from New Deal (or any other Presidential agenda, before or since) that is NOT beneficial to the nation, it can and should be repealed or redone via the existing protocols and procedures detailed in the US Constitution.

I can't make it any more "elementary" than that, my dear Holmes...