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Reagan and the New Deal: Repeal or Replay?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2022

Bruce L. R. Smith  and
James D. Carroll
Bruce L. R. Smith
Affiliation:
The Brookings Institution
James D. Carroll
Affiliation:
Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University
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Extract

President Reagan's success lies not in the size of federal budget cuts but in that he has been able to make cuts at all. He has a long way to go before the New Deal is repealed or even derailed.

The Reagan budget has been viewed as revolutionary, as an unprecedented break in the tradition of modern social policy. According to Russell Baker, “… in the end even the Democrats were agreeable to the death of the New Deal, which took place this week at the Capitol.” Yet this view runs up against the fact that Ronald Reagan cut his political teeth on the New Deal, admired FDR and emulated his political style, was an ardent Democrat and an early labor organizer, and has cast his political appeal to many groups who were raised up by the New Deal to non-poor status. Is the Administration of President Reagan a repeal of the New Deal or a replay? A close look at the budget, and the political context that produced the budget, gives some partial answers.

For our purposes, the New Deal is defined as the loose set of principles and policies that has developed from the 1930s to the 1970s and formed the “mainstream” of American domestic politics. For the moment we consider the Great Society to be part of that tradition. President Reagan himself apparently does not share this assumption, viewing the New Deal as having more in common with progressivism than with the Great Society of Lyndon Johnson.

Type
The Reagan Budget: Redistribution of Power and Responsibilities, Five Perspectives
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 14 , Issue 4 , Fall 1981 , pp. 758 - 767
Copyright
Copyright © The American Political Science Association 1981

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References

1 New York Times, August 1, 1981, p. A23.

2 American Textile Mfgrs. Institute, Inc. v. Donovan, June 17, 1981, 49 Law Week 4720.

3 Industrial Union Department, AFL-CIO v. American Petroleum Institute, July 2, 1980, 48 Law Week 5022.

4 Hawley, Ellis W., The New Deel end the Problem of Monopoly (Princeton University Press, 1966).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 “Feet Sheet: The Omnibus Reconciliation Act of August 13. 1981, White House Press Release,” p. 19.

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