The New New Deal

January 24, 1955

About a year ago (Newsweek, Feb. 15, 1954) my article in this place carried the title “Ike’s Semi New Deal.” The present headline conforms to the new state of affairs as revealed in the President’s messages to the new Congress.

This is no mere personal judgment. It is a state of affairs acknowledged by the Democratic New Dealers themselves. The Democratic House leader, Congressman John W. McCormack, said of the State of the Union message: “On domestic matters most of it might be termed New Dealish.” And the Democratic whip of the Senate, Earle C. Clements, declared: “I am glad to see him embracing so many things that the Democrats have so long stood for and on which he has been unable to get the support of his own party.”

The New Deal policies now adopted by Mr. Eisenhower are so numerous, in fact, that it is easier to point to exceptions. I can think of two: Private instead of socialized electric power and flexible instead of fixed farm supports. Toward both, the President seems to take a mainly defensive attitude. His retreat from the previous farm-parity formula is so mild that we are still piling up enormous surpluses at the expense of the taxpayer and consumer. As for nearly all the other policies advocated, Harry Truman might have delivered the latest State of the Union speech, and did deliver a score of speeches like it.

Yet when Mr. Eisenhower dealt in broader generalities in that speech he paid at least lip service to a program of another kind: “The aspirations of most of our people can best be fulfilled through their own enterprise and initiative, without governmental interference. . . . Our government must not impair the self-respect, freedom, and incentive of the individual.” But he followed this with an array of programs for increased governmental interference, and less freedom and incentive for the individual (particularly if he happens to be a taxpayer); for more government spending, more taxation, more deficits—in brief, for a huge paternalistic “welfare” state.

Mr. Eisenhower called for a continuance, and in some directions for an expansion, of the Truman foreign-aid and the Truman Point Four programs. He asked for a billion-dollar upper Colorado River basic development project. He outlined a $101-billion ten-year highway-modernization program. He asked for more public-works programs; special aid to low-income farm families; more loans of the taxpayers’ money to “small business”; still more government-subsidized housing; a Federal health-reinsurance program; Federal aid to build more schools. He asked Congress to raise the Federal minimum wage from 75 to 90 cents an hour and to expand its coverage. He asked amendment of the Taft-Hartley Act—in directions demanded by union-leader propaganda. He asked for a general pay increase for all Federal workers, adoption of a “substantial” pay increase for Congress and the judiciary, adoption of a Constitutional amendment to lower the voting age to 18, and many other “progressive” or big spending programs.

Does not the President see that his program, considered collectively or by most of its individual items, is in direct contradiction to the principles he has previously preached and is still preaching? Of course, there are loopholes in his “simple rules.” To announce that “the Federal government should perform an essential task only when it cannot otherwise be adequately performed” is to allow wide room for interpretation of what constitutes adequacy. It is the contention of the Democratic New Dealers, for example, that private industry cannot adequately supply electric power. The British socialists even contend that private industry cannot adequately supply railroad transportation, coal, or steel. Yet how can the President reconcile his new program with his previously expressed concern for lower taxes and a balanced budget?

The new Eisenhower program raises one final question: What longer reason or need is there for a Republican Party? Do we need two major parties, both demanding the same huge bureaucratic paternalism?