Ohio Republican Admits FDR Did Not Cause The Depression

One of the talking points that the GOP has attempted to deploy in the battle over the stimulus package is, "Hey! Remember that New Deal dealie? Boy, howdy, wasn't that a massive failure!" Oooh, oooh! And what if the Nazis had gotten the bomb? Then we'd be in some serious doo-doo, tra-la-la!"

Anyway, freshman Representative Steve Austria heard that talking point and decided that it could be made way awesomer. And in an environment where his colleagues are playing fast and loose with the facts, who can blame him? Still, I think this revision took things a step too far with the editors of the Columbus Dispatch:

The day before, as Austria was explaining his opposition to the huge federal stimulus package backed by President Barack Obama, he told The Dispatch editorial board: "When Roosevelt did this, he put our country into a Great Depression. ... He tried to borrow and spend, he tried to use the Keynesian approach, and our country ended up in a Great Depression. That's just history."

Austria said he gave that message via telephone to constituents at a recent town-hall meeting.

Uhm, yeah. That led the Dispatch to point out that "Roosevelt took office in March 1933. Many historians date the Depression from the stock-market crash later dubbed Black Tuesday, which happened in 1929."

And so, Austria had to get back on point:

"I did not mean to imply in any way that President Roosevelt was responsible for putting us into the Depression, but rather was trying to make the point that Roosevelt's attempt to use significant spending to get us out of the Depression did not have the desired effect. Roosevelt did not put us into the Depression, but rather his policies could not pull the nation out of the recession."

I guess now is as good a time as any to offer Austria the chance to familiarize himself with what the New Deal accomplished, via the handy graph Rachel Maddow deployed Monday night:

That's just history!

Comments

[leeman79]

As usual, another historically ignorant GOP idiot running off at the mouth. Give credit where credit is due, and cite some of your party accomplishments:

Teddy Roosevelt - Establishment of the national parks and conservation areas. Anti-trust legislation to
prevent monopolies.

Dwight Eisenhower - The interstate road system, and integration of the armed forces.

Richard Nixon - The establishment of OSHA, EPA, and DEA.

Ronald Reagan - Not included. A complete an utter failure. Destroyed the modern U.S. economy.

[alukes]

Do forget Bill Clinton - Technically it ain't sex if it ain't with Hillary.

[SCG]

Only Republicans are obsessed with Bill Clinton's sex life.

[MJinCanada]

Bill's wayward willie harmed precisely 4 people -- Hillary, Chelsea, Monica and himself.

Adding up 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq and the New Orleans levees, Bush has about 10,000 American deaths to answer for.

[Sepulchre]

How did that effect the economy? We ended his presidency with a surplus. His personality flaws had no effect on how he governed.

I'd rather have a womanizing president who actually manages to make the economy prosper than a straight laced president that runs it into the ground.

[BeasleysMom]

You still carrying on about that? The repression of the so called Christian right in this country is more than cr a zy. The rest of the world could not believe that we cared about that when everything was going well in the country. You and the rest of of your kind seriously need to get a life.

[SensibleJoe]

Revisionist history isn't going to help you, GOP. Roosevelt not only got the USA out of the Great Depression, he also stood up and beat down Nazism -- come to think of it, while plenty in your party were behaving as isolationist obstructionists. Hmmm... Sounds familiar. I guess history does repeat itself.

[Fremon]

This was something that the Republicans and Fox news was trying to present. It shows that they don't do well in school. There should be better vetting for getting mostly Republican congress people. Fox is a problem with sketchy history as well. O'Reilly believes that Sweden was not nuetral duriing WW2 and that that American soldiors did the massacre at Malamy (sic) during the same war. He also thinks that Columbia Journalism school is inferior to his Boston College. One can understand is that he just is not well educated despite his college graduation. He Palin got her degree at whatever in Journalism and McCain graduated near the bottom 5 of his class. So there it is for dem Retards. Hannity has his share of distorted history but can be forgiven as he failed to finish his higher education.

[gfulmore]

Beck can be really off base with U.S. history, especially the New Deal stuff. He just doesn't know the stuff well. And since he is basically an entertainer by profession, he just throws stuff out hoping that it will stick with folks who don't know and/or don't care to know the truth.

[alukes]

I'd like to see a chart of the unemployment rate during the same time period. Unfortunately rising GDP didn't trickle down to the workers.

[pencilpusher]

When you use the resources easily available to you, you can draw your own chart of unemployment rate during that time period. And you will discover that rising GDP did indeed benefit workers (trickle down is a discredited conservative theory which never had any basis in fact). Unemployment dropped from a high of over 25% to less than 15% by the start of WWII. Check it out for yourself.

[alukes]

Wow! Down to just 15%. 5 times the rate in 1929. Mission Accomplished!!! And in just 6 years! Maybe we should try that again.

[Merersu]

"The Roosevelt administration reduced unemployment from 25 per cent in 1933 to 9 per cent in 1936, up to 13 per cent in 1938 (due largely to a reversal of the fiscal activism which had characterized FDR's first term in office), back to less than 10 per cent at the end of 1940, to less than 1 per cent a year later when the U.S. was plunged into the Second World War at the end of 1941."

James Galbraith: Unemployment and the New Deal
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/01/21/unemployment_statistics_of_the_new_deal_era/

[BeasleysMom]

Excellent. If you were my student you'd get an "A!"

[myub40]

i think these republicans need to take history 101 - instead of relying on stupid talking points.

[Clarabell]

They know what they are saying, they are just banking on the possibility that their audience is dumber than they are.

[jazzycafe]

They always have this core audience, the GOP base, that will believe whatever their talking heads say. This audience is just fine with stupid talking points, that's how they like it. Easy to digest.

[realpolitic]

I, for one, am so tired of conservative misinformation. If they can not engage in a debate without completely reinventing the facts, perhaps their policy arguments are faulty. I think the last eight years are evidence of the wasteland conservative policies of tax cuts for the wealthy and complete deregulation can leave. Amazingly, they then change the terms of debate to trumpet the same policies which led us over the precipice. If the facts are rarely on the side of conservatives' arguments, perhaps the conservatives should change sides, as opposed to changing the facts.

[ChristianEcon.com]

Very well said. Thanks.

[SCG]

What they really object to is Keynesian economics. And speaking of revisionism, there is talk Wall Street counseled the Federal Reserve in the 70's, creating the inflationary environment which allowed Reagan and the Friedmanites take hold.

[AlaninElkGrove]

...FDR would be a better president from the grave then ANY president named Bush...

[AlaninElkGrove]

,,,this just in: the Iraq war was Barack Obama's fault...

[ChristianEcon.com]

Nope--the Iraq war was FDR's fault too, if not Carter's or Clinton's....

[tjfxh]

Really? I heard it was Vietnam. Oh, that was Clinton. (snark)

[sheputstheLinPAIN]

Stupid is not a family value.

[AlaninElkGrove]

...and FDR was a failure; that's why he was re-elected THREE TIMES!!!

[SCG]

I think that's a better record than Churchill who was out of office at the end of the war.

[jcdf]

These Republican revisionist love to fudge the facts about the Great Depression.They never say It started with the stock market crash of October 1929. Caused by an unregulated and over leveraged financial industry (sound familiar). Republican Pres. Herbert Hoover did basically nothing to jump start the economy. So by 1933 when FDR took office unemployment was 25%, With the "New Deal" he got people working on things like schools, roads, dams, power grid, many of these things are still in use today. FDR got the unemployment down to around 15% in about a year or two.I think thats a big improvement. In 1937 there was another recession when the fiscal conservatives talked FDR into cutting spending to soon.

From Oct 1929 to March 1933 , 3 1/2 years under Hoover there was no confidence in the markets. Which is exactly where we are today. We have only been in this mess for 6 months and many people are already giving up hope. The longer we are in this mess the longer it will take people to regain enough confidence to start investing and spending. Thats why Pres. Obama wants to move fast with the money, each month more jobs are lost makes it more expensive to replace those jobs. The Republicans are doing exactly what they did back in 1937. No wonder they wanted to cut education from the Stimulus Package, they have no use for history..... or math........... or science.

[RenoSage]

JOB SEEKERS are giving up hope. That is why today's unemployment figures are not accurate.
They count the people on unemployment and there are many whose unemployment compensation
has expired and are not counted.
If the count were accurate, would it be 25% as it was in 1930?

[BJ-1979]

This statement is why I packed up my family and moved from the Great State of Ohio. The Reps. have cheated during elections, invested state money in coins, and have forgotten large areas of the state. Take a drive on route 7 and look at the ghost towns and steel plants. The school levy in my town was defeated 17 times,so no state aid was given. Tax cuts for business while the people cut their throats! When FDR was president was the last time we had even a chance to get to the middle class!

[AlaninElkGrove]

...and how come FDR's portrait doesn't grace any of our coins or currency???

[rugbymom]

Looked at a dime recently? Hint: It's not Dick Cheney.

[SCG]

They put Cheney in the movie, "It's a Wonderful Life" he was the e.vil banker.

[JustSteve]

Ummm...

you've not seen our really cool dimes?

[jcdf]

FDR is on the dime.

[Girl28]

This is evidence that the requirements need to be a little more stringent for people applying for public office. I have learned this week, especially ,that alot of congress people are seriously s.tupid.