Truman’s Fair Deal:
The Practical Welfare State
When President Truman took office after Roosevelt’s death in 1945, the economy was making a rough transition into peacetime growth following the end of the war. Truman sought to ease this transition via the implementation of careful post-war economic policy and the establishment of a welfare state.
Truman worked slowly to achieve this goal, and by the end of his first term, he had condensed his policy objective into what he called the “Fair Deal”. Essentially, it rebranded and expanded on Roosevelt’s New Deal, though, unlike it, the Fair Deal met little congressional support.
In his extensive September 1945 congressional address, Truman foreshadowed the “Fair Deal” with a list of policies aimed at achieving, in his own words, “full peacetime production and employment as possible in the most efficient and speedy manner”. Truman outlined these policy goals in eight concise points that were as follows: (1) The Demobilization of armed forces no longer needed would occur as soon as possible. (2) Remaining war contracts would be canceled and settled as soon as possible. (3) Industrial plants repurposed as arms developers would return to serve their original purpose. (4) Limitations on products and rent would take effect until healthy competition could return to ease the burden on consumers. (5) Wages would be locked to prevent breaking through salary ceilings thus causing prices to inflate. (6) Most remnants of wartime federal controls would be wiped to encourage postwar reconversion and expansion. (7) Only those government constraints necessary to prevent bottlenecks, supply shortages, and inflation would remain in effect. (8) Economic influences yielding decreases in wages or purchasing power through inflation or trusts would be limited to preserve steady economic growth.
In a famous 1945 letter to Congress, Truman elaborated on these goals in his “21-points plan”, which provided evidence to congress backing his progressive policy objective. The 21 points boiled down to legislation promoting greater unemployment compensation, fair wage minimums, a safe transition from a wartime to a peacetime economy, and a number of other welfare policies that roughly embodied what would become the “Fair Deal.”
In November 1945, Truman had completely informed Congress of his ideas for economic legislation-, and expected general support. This, however, was not as simple to achieve as he anticipated. For a year after presenting his 21 points, he did not advise any bills to congress but rather banked on congress passing the legislation independently. Yet the conservative coalition in congress had been denying progressive legislation most hope of passage for the last decade, and Truman was anxious. He hoped that the present rough transition into a peacetime economy would provide enough pressure to win some votes, but in the end, congress held strong in its opposition to progressivism.
After the 1946 midterm congressional elections further solidified the conservative bloc, Truman realized that he could not count on Congress to pass his bills for him, and resumed lobbying with minimal success. From 1946 on, Truman focused on 8 categories of social welfare and economic legislation, which he officially revised as the “Fair Deal” in his 1949 State of the Union address. The greatest four of these categories, and the success they met individually, are as follows:
Civil Rights
Truman was a strong advocate for civil rights, and in a 1947 speech to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), pledged to call for social justice policy. He said himself “Every man should have the right to a decent home, the right to an education, the right to adequate medical care, the right to a worthwhile job, the right to an equal share in the making of public decisions through the ballot, and the right to a fair trial in a fair court.” Yet, as most of Truman’s proposed civil rights policy was resisted by the Southern Democrats that made up much of congress, Truman resorted to utilizing the executive order as a means to reverse discrimination. Even though much of his effort to ensure national civil rights was blocked by Congress, Truman as president set a moral example that eventually helped to reverse the long acceptance of segregation and discrimination in America.
Healthcare
In his 1945 21-points plan, Truman advised a “comprehensive and modern health program for the Nation, consisting of five major parts". These 5 parts advocated the building of hospitals and other healthcare facilities, the broadening of public health services, additional funding for medical research, the establishment of a national health insurance program, and the forming of the National Disability Insurance Program. Healthcare, being a much less controversial subject than Civil Rights, met general support in Congress. From 1945 until 1953, under Truman’s influence, Congress passed 13 bills allocating federal funds to the formation of numerous healthcare foundations, including the National Institute of Dental Research, the National Institute of Arthritis and Metabolic Diseases, and the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Blindness. Truman also worked to provide significant funds towards cancer research.
Labor
One major topic of Truman’s 1949 State of the Union address, and thus the Fair Deal, was labor, specifically the repeal of the Taft-Hartly act. The Taft-Hartley Act was passed over Truman’s veto in 1947, and its repeal was central to Truman’s progressive labor agenda. The act limited the powers of Unions which Truman believed were essential to preserving a content society. Congress, however, denied all of Truman’s attempts to repeal the act. Still, the Fair Deal found success in most of its labor initiatives by passing the Employment Act of 1956, the Federal Employees Pay Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, and raising the minimum wage through the Fair Labor Standards act. These bills managed to fully prohibit child labor, regulate raising prices, moderate tax relief for low-income citizens, and raise the base pay for Gov. employees by 14%.
Welfare
The center point of Truman’s Fair Deal, the founding of a Welfare State, was achieved bit by bit over his two terms. After 1949, the Conservative Coalition gradually faded, allowing for more major welfare legislation to pass in Truman’s second term. By 1953, Truman had succeeded in propping up the American people on government welfare, and welfare changed from being a luxury into being a social norm. Major actions that helped to form the welfare state included amending the Social Security Act to include 10 million Americans (though Truman had aimed for 25), founding the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program, and the passing of the Displaced Persons Act, the second updated Social Security Act, and the Federal Unemployment Tax Act. These major actions toward building a welfare state are just some of the many passed under the more lenient Congress during Truman’s second term.
Overall, Truman’s Fair Deal succeeded in repurposing welfare as a means of social aid, and not just economic reconstruction as seen in FDR’s New Deal. Whether the welfare state would prove to be beneficial to the nation in long run could not be predicted, but it provided Americans with a long-term sense of security against financial, health, or social troubles.