Question

How did the economic and social policies of the new deal lift the United States out of the great depression? (3 paragraphs)

Answer 1

The New Deal was a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1936. It responded to needs for relief, reform, and recovery from the Great Depression. Major federal programs included the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), the Civil Works Administration (CWA), the Farm Security Administration (FSA), the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933(NIRA) and the Social Security Administration (SSA). They provided support for farmers, the unemployed, youth and the elderly. The New Deal included new constraints and safeguards on the banking industry and efforts to re-inflate the economy after prices had fallen sharply. New Deal programs included both laws passed by Congress as well as presidential executive orders during the first term of the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The programs focused on what historians refer to as the "3 Rs": relief for the unemployed and poor, recovery of the economy back to normal levels and reform of the financial system to prevent a repeat depression. The New Deal produced a political realignment, making the Democratic Party the majority (as well as the party that held the White House for seven out of the nine presidential terms from 1933 to 1969) with its base in liberal ideas, the South, traditional Democrats, big city machines and the newly empowered labor unions and ethnic minorities. The Republicans were split, with conservatives opposing the entire New Deal as hostile to business and economic growth and liberals in support. The realignment crystallized into the New Deal coalition that dominated presidential elections into the 1960s while the opposing conservative coalition largely controlled Congress in domestic affairs from 1937 to 1964.

The New Deal worked. After FDR had launched the first New Deal, the economy grew 10.8 percent in 1934. When the second New Deal rolled out, the economy increased 8.9 percent in 1935 and 12.9 percent in 1936. After FDR cut government spending in 1937, the economy contracted 3.3 percent.

From 1932, the year before the New Deal, to 1941, when the U.S. entered the war, the debt only grew by $3 billion. The next year, defense spending quadrupled the amount added to the debt by a whopping $23 billion. The amount added tripled to $64 billion in 1943. If that much had been spent in the first year of the New Deal, it would have ended the Depression right there and then.

Some say the New Deal didn't work because the Depression lasted for 10 years. They point out that defense spending on World War II was the only thing that ended the Depression. But if FDR had spent the same amount on the New Deal as he did on war, it would have ended the Depression.

New Deal programs softened the extremes of the business cycle. Before the New Deal (1797-1932), there were 33 major economic downturns, 22 recessions, four depressions and seven bank runs and panics. They impacted 60 of the 132 years covered. Recessions were more severe than they are today because there weren't the New Deal federal agencies to control corruption, fraud, and exploitation