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New Deal Dbq

Decent Essays

The Great Depression, which began in 1929, resulted with the United States, as well as many other countries, in the worst economic position it had ever encountered and it was the duty of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to try to take charge and try to alleviate this crisis through a program he created which was known as the New Deal. Even though FDR was a Democrat himself, his policies were not completely partisan and drew criticism from both ends of the political spectrum. While the New Deal was a primarily left wing campaign through its huge show of government spending, it’s main goal was to protect capitalism and the free market and it also had a fair amount of important aspects on the right that promoted private business itself while …show more content…

Essentially, the government was intervening in the affairs of these private farmers by getting involved with how much they should produce and by giving funds to said farmers. The AAA was, in fact, successful in its goal of supporting these farmers and raising the prices for agricultural goods. Another and probably the most left system of the New Deal was the development of the Tennessee Valley Authority. The objective of the TVA was for the government itself to provide power to the local areas. FDR described that he wanted to create “a corporation clothed with the power of government but possessed of the flexibility and initiative of a private enterprise.” Not only was the government again inserting itself into the lives of the individuals in these regions, but also it was almost a business itself that could possibly compete with private enterprises. The TVA brought many benefits to the effected people and helped from providing power to those that otherwise wouldn’t have the option to preventing flooding. Yet another left wing change Roosevelt installed was the Social Security Act that Congress passed in 1935. This act provided income for the unemployed and retirees as well as eventually set up a pension system. Yet again the government increased its spending on the people of the U.S. and told private workers what to do with their money in regard to their pensions. Lastly, the New Deal was extremely liberal in the government’s huge amount of spending in its provision of relief to give jobs to their unemployed. From the CCC providing jobs in national parks to the WPA having men work on public buildings, the government saw the problem of unemployment and took it upon itself to provide jobs to the needy. The size of the WPA’s budget alone was humungous with around $5 billion in its first two years (Brinkley, 695). The whole point of these relief programs was to have the government help out its people as the U.S.’s economy and private sector could not support its

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