Tuesday, March 07, 2006
They Lie About Everything: Anti-New-Deal/Great Society Edition
Hoo boy. George Will, in seeking to attack Democratic Presidential hopeful John Edwards' efforts on behalf of the poor and the average American, once again exhumes the old GOP lie that the "New Deal" and "Great Society" programs of Democrats like Presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Lyndon Baines Johnson didn't work. I could write thousands of pages and provide thousands of cites on why this is a lie. But instead, I'll focus on two of the key things that show that Will is lying: 1) Former Housing secretary Joseph Califano, back in 1999, provided a wealth of evidence to show that, despite the GOP's attacks, the New Deal and Great Society programs were the best things to be done for America since the abolition of slavery. From 1963, when Lyndon Johnson became president, until 1970, as the impact of his Great Society programs was being felt, the portion of Americans living below the poverty line dropped from 22.2 percent to 12.6 percent, the biggest decline over such a brief period during the 20th century. 2) The Social Security program alone, just one of the many life-saving parts of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, has singlehandedly insured that Americans need not spend their golden years living in the streets. Poverty among the elderly, which used to be endemic in America, came close to being eliminated with the creation of Social Security. Pass it on!
It helps people. And the people who designed it did the math.That's why the Wackos hate it so much.
Of course, if idiocy is hereditary, it may be true that the grandparents and parents of contemporary Republicans were also idiots.
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