Senator McCain had a strong speech. I don't agree with everything he was saying (I think he proposed another $275 billion in tax cuts... and then wails about debt. Senator McCain, your tax cuts will cost far more than all the pork you propose to eliminate from the bill.) Nevertheless, he was going point by point clearly.
Max Baucus just took 3 minutes to make one point, which was idiotic. He is an idiotic. Just kept saying the same thing over and over again.
I see now that John Ensign is pushing the same revisionist line that all Republicans seem to be going all out for now.
Ensign: New Deal sank nation into deeper depression. Same as Amity Shlaes. Same as Peter Schiff. Same as Cal Thomas yesterday. In fact, Thomas said "this is an objective fact." This is WRONG.
I am f**king sickened.
Not just a few hacks, but the entire Republican party is taking their unrealistic talking points very seriously. These guys actually believe this sh*t. The facts are obvious: GNP, which had been contracting annually from 1929 to 1933, began to turn up in March 1933. Unemployment, which had been growing steadily until then, began falling. Industrial production, which had been falling steadily until 1933, began to turn up. There is no objective indicator that the New Deal worsened the depression. If anything, the New Deal was not enough spending.
This is like Democrats coming back and saying the economy got worse under Reagan compared to Carter. One HUGE point against the U.S. right now is that about 45% of the population is willing to accept total hackery.
The upturn in March 1933 dealt more with FDR's efforts to secure the banking sector from its unstoppable decline. That was a common sense menuevre and anbody with a brain(which Hoover didn't possess) would have acted similarily. You got to have a stable saving and lending system. The Big spending items of the New Deal didn't take effect till 1934-1936 and the Second New Deal which was mostly Spending Projects in 1936-1937. In late 1936 the Economy began to slump back down and by 1938 all the gains had been wiped out and we were right back were they started in 1933 and this led to massive gains in the House and Senate for the GOP in 1938 and had in not been for WW2 the Republicans would have won in 1940 and era big Gov;t would have died after just 8 years.(Thanks Hitler for leaving us with the nanny state). Even after the War the New Deal's effects plus the war rationing created a period of hyper-inflation like that of the 70;s that has been overlooked in history books. Its why the GOP congress with only 52 votes in the Senate was able to overide Truman's veto of Taft-Hartley in 1947, otherwise the pressure would not have been there and not enough Dems would have voted to overide.
