How Successful Was The New Deal Dbq

First came the government to finance his first New Deal, Roosevelt had introduced higher taxes for the rich. They felt that he had betrayed his class and he was expelled from his social club for letting down “his people”. Roosevelt’s response was typically blunt claiming that the policies he was pursuing would tread on the toes of the few while the majority benefited. The New Deal also faced a lot of opposition from the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court took its stance from a legal viewpoint and in 1935 it effectively declared the National Recovery Administration illegal. In the following year it declared the Agricultural Adjustment Act unconstitutional thus killing off the AAA. The point made by the Supreme Court was that any efforts made to help farmers etc. should come at a state level and not federal level and that these parts of the New Deal went against the powers given to the states by the Constitution.

Criticism of the Roosevelt administration ranged from arguments that its policies would harm business and economic recovery to charges that it was subverting democracy. Some labeled the New Deal as fascism, although it is important to remember that at the time, fascism did not connote the tragedy of World War II but rather an ideology of authoritarian nationalism and planned economy, associated most often with Benito Mussolini's Italy. Others saw the New Deal as a manifestation of socialism or communism. The left accused Roosevelt of empowering big business while the right opposed the policies that regulated business and expanded workers' rights. FDR and his vision attracted critics from all sides of the political spectrum who often labeled the New Deal using the same terms but meaning very different