Tuesday, June 5, 2012

The New Deal alphabet soup of agencies and laws

AAA, SEC, PWA, NIRA, SSA, TVA and so on. During the 1930s Franklin Delano Roosevelt´s federal government created a lot of national agencies to carry out the New Deal programs. Over 30 new agencies were created to put federal programs in practice. Here you have some cartoons about the New Deal remedies: 

Roosevelt: "Of course we may try to change remedies if we don´t get results"



Roosevelt to Uncle Sam on 1933 Christmas´ Eve: "Uncle, I´m surely expecting something!"

All these agencies and programs were abbreviated with the use of several acronyms and were known as the Alphabet Soup. On this cartoon we can see that even Albert Einstein had difficulties to understand this letter soup: 


Einstein to Roosevelt: "It´s very perplexing. Relativity is so simple by comparison!"

On this link you have a list of the most used New Deal Acronyms: 


And here you have some more information about the Top Ten New Deal Programs: 


Many of the agencies created during the New Deal years still exist. Here you have a report about them: 


The New Deal programs mobilized 64,000 million dollars, reduced poverty and created a lot of jobs, but some groups in the USA considered Roosevelt´s programs as a step forward towards centrally planned economy  and socialism and went to the Supreme Court of Justice to oppose these this programs. This cartoon reflects this opinion: 


On the right in the background we can observe Stalin saying "How red the sunrise is getting!".
On the left in the foreground we can read the interpretation the critics made of the New Deal spending program. 



And this is another cartoon where Roosevelt denied that his program was revolutionary:



The Supreme Court of Justice declared some of the New Deal laws unconstitutional. Here you have a list of them and the reasons why they were considered to be unconstitutional: 


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