Franklin D Roosevelt's Accomplishments

Franklin Delano Roosevelt is widely regarded as one of the greatest presidents in US history; Roosevelt led the nation through the worst of the Great Depression and the majority of World War II before his death in 1945. Roosevelt, or "FDR," as he is colloquially known, introduced legislation that at its time was revolutionary and is now considered standard federal practice. Social Security, the National Labor Relations Board, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Tennessee Valley Authority are still in place today, helping to improve the welfare of the nation through a range of duties, from providing power to rural areas to regulating stock exchange practices. However, at the time, there

Sweigert shows Roosevelt (dressed as a cowboy) urging a hesitant banker to ride a horse labeled "More Lending," which is hobbled (with hobbles that read "New Deal Destruction of Business Confidence"). The New Deal prompted hostility from the business community in a myriad of ways. The Wagner Act formally recognized the rights of laborers to form and join unions, which had long been considered the enemy of business throughout the nation. The Social Security Act taxed consumers and limited their buying power at a time when they already had so little of it. New Deal programs were widely considered to damage business confidence and much of the business community, mostly economic conservatives, balked at the increasingly Keynesian route that the New Deal took. The nation had already become dependent on the flow of funds to these programs, as was apparent in 1937, when Roosevelt cut funding to his programs in the face of a steadily improving economy. The resulting recession damaged public perception of Roosevelt almost irreparably before the beginning of WWII provided a distraction from US

A man, labeled "Tax Payer," looks worriedly at a Christmas list while a group of children turn their faces to him happily (Marcus). The faces of these children are etched with the initials of many New Deal policies, such as the NRA, CCC, TVA, and AAA (Marcus). The possible costs of these new policies were concerning not only to the business community, but to upper class Americans. Before the Sixteenth Amendment exempted income taxes from requirements the Constitution established regarding other direct taxes, and allowed for the widespread institution of a graduated income tax, the government relied largely on tariffs on foreign goods. During the Great Depression, Herbert Hoover found that these tariffs did not help the US in its recovery, but instead prompted retaliatory tariffs from European nations (who were going through economic recessions of their own). Income taxes, consequently, became one of the nation's main sources of revenue throughout the Depression, but at this time upper class citizens were some of the only ones to be taxed as the recession had shrunken the middle class and left millions impoverished. Roosevelt, who came from a wealthy family himself, was then seen as a traitor to his class. Through the New Deal, Roosevelt had pitted himself against not just the business community, but the nation's high society as