Hoover announces his 1931 stimulus plan

"Some of the reactionary economists urged that we should allow the liquidation to take its course until we had found bottom.... We determined that we would not follow the advice of the bitter-end liquidationists and see the whole body of debtors of the United States brought to bankruptcy and the savings of our people brought to destruction...Instead we met the situation with proposals to private business and to Congress of the most gigantic program of economic defense and counterattack ever evolved in the history of the Republic." -Hoover

(Wikipedia)
Hoover confronted a world of political possibilities when he returned home in 1919. Democratic Party leaders looked on him as a potential candidate for President, and President Wilson privately preferred Hoover as his successor. "There could not be a finer one," asserted Franklin D. Roosevelt, then a rising star from New York. Hoover briefly considered becoming a Democrat, but he believed that 1920 would be a Republican year.
A self-described progressive and reformer, Hoover saw the presidency as a vehicle for improving the conditions of all Americans by encouraging public-private cooperation—what he termed "volunterism".
Long before he had entered politics, he had denounced laissez-faire thinking.[32]
At the outset of the Depression, Hoover claims in his memoirs that he rejected Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon's suggested "leave-it-alone" approach, and called many business leaders to Washington to urge them not to lay off workers or cut wages.
Congress, desperate to increase federal revenue, enacted the Revenue Act of 1932, which was the largest peacetime tax increase in history.[52] The Act increased taxes across the board, so that top earners were taxed at 63% on their net income. The 1932 Act also increased the tax on the net income of corporations from 12% to 13.75%.
The final attempt of the Hoover Administration to rescue the economy occurred in 1932 with the passage of the Emergency Relief and Construction Act, which authorized funds for public works programs and the creation of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC). The RFC's initial goal was to provide government-secured loans to financial institutions, railroads and farmers. The RFC had minimal impact at the time, but was adopted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and greatly expanded as part of his New Deal.
Even so, New Dealer Rexford Tugwell[56] later remarked that although no one would say so at the time, "practically the whole New Deal was extrapolated from programs that Hoover started."

"For three long years," Roosevelt said in accepting his party's nomination, "I have been going up and down this country preaching that government . . . costs too much. I shall not stop that preaching."
FDR campaigned in 1932 on a platform of slashing the size and cost of government, and of ending the "reckless and extravagant" spending of Herbert Hoover.
Stop that preaching he didn't. He accused Hoover of presiding over "the greatest spending administration in peacetime in all our history . . . an administration that has piled bureau on bureau, commission on commission." He slammed the Republican's record of "reckless and extravagant" spending, and of thinking "that we ought to center control of everything in Washington as rapidly as possible." He mocked those who thought "a huge expenditure of public funds" was the best way to grow the economy of succumbing "to the illusions of economic magic." His running mate, Texas Congressman John Nance Garner, even warned that Hoover was "leading the country down the path of socialism." - Jeff Jacoby

"Unemployment Relief"
Recorded October 18, 1931
Full speech at The Authentic History Center
Transcript at: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pi...

• Category

  Education

[Christopher Ferrell]

This is a great resource to illuminate the lie that Hoover tried to let the markets correct naturally

[politicoochie09]

The government steals billions from you and gives you back pennies.

[crocve]

"Reactionary economists..." Yes, because big Gov is revolutionary, LOL.

[SaulOhio]

You seem to misunderstand. I am trying to counter the propaganda that Hoover did nothing. He clearly did a LOT, and that was the problem.

[Tobey Pelzer]

it turned into a recession, then a depression and THEN a great depression. just imagine if Hoover didn't tax and spend too much...the Depression would've lasted a lot more shorter and it could probably give Hoover a 2nd term.

[Tobey Pelzer]

so you're saying that Hoover's tax and tariff increases and intense spending counts as doing nothing? Roosevelt never criticized Hoover for doing nothing. he criticized him for taxing and spending too much (although we all know that he and Truman would do the same thing later on). all the Keynesian economic propaganda is nonsense. The Great Depression didn't turn into a Depression over night. especially a Great one.

[SaulOhio]

But the Hoover laissez-faire myth does still survive. Look up "McCain's Dangerous Do-Nothing Economics" by Eric Rouchway

And "The Man Who Did Nothing: Hoover and The Great Depression"

Look up "What did Herbert Hoover have to do with the great depression?" in Yahoo Answers.

There are still people trying to promote this myth.

[SaulOhio]

During war, government has to spend vast amounts of money. There is necessarily a competition between the two warring governments, which can marshal the most in war materials and effectively put them on the battlefield. This diverts those resources from the private economy to the war.

[SaulOhio]

External military intervention requires internal economic government interventions. To produce the military hardware needed for war, the government has to take control over a vast portion of the economy, as well as turn workers into soldiers.

Our high school history text books still say Hoover believed in laissez-faire. Paul Krugman says Hoover implemented austerity.

Though liberals can no longer openly call Hoover laissez-faire in open forums, they still try to minimize his interventions.

[Vebinz]

And I don't see the similarities between internal economic "govt. intervention", and external military ones. If you think entering WWI was wrong, fine, then make a moral argument not try to cobine it with internal economic philosophy.

And who ever said Hoover believed in laissez-faire? WHO believes in laissez-faire anymore anyhow? Hoover did not believe in "law of the jungle" economics, nor in state-run ones either.

[SaulOhio]

The reason given for the Act does not change the fact that Hoover did sign it, and believed in it, giving the lie to the claim that he ever believed in laissez-faire.

If the problem was the result of WWI spending causing a relative overproduction of farm goods, then clearly THAT isn't the result of laissez-faire. The problems caused by one government intervention are used to rationalize more government intervention.