Obama and FDR

From Burt Fulsom:

The 60+ House seats that the Democrats lost this week is the greatest loss for a party in power since FDR’s Democrats lost 81 seats in 1938. The circumstances of both losses are similar.

For example, shortly after FDR lost his 81 seats, Robert Doughton, the Democratic chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, made this comment: “I don’t believe that generations which so far haven’t a chance to vote or to get born should be paying off our headaches.” FDR had almost doubled the national debt in his first six years in the White House, and Doughton was sad that his grandchildren–who may well be alive today–would have to pay the debts accumulated by FDR’s failed spending programs. The large debt being accumulated today under President Obama will have to be paid off by the grandchildren of Congressman Doughton’s grandchildren. FDR transferred pieces of his debt to us, and now we will transfer debts from the stimulus package and the various bailouts to our grandchildren. Voters in 1938 and in 2010 were both saying “no” to more debt. That is a reason for hope.

Interestingly, the groups in the country most supportive of FDR in 1938 and Obama in 2010 are from the areas of the country struggling the most financially. In Alabama and Mississippi, for example, the Democrats controlled all seats in Congress in 1938, and both states voted overwhelmingly for FDR. Yet they were among the poorest states in the U. S. in 1938. Today, California, with its $138 billion in debt, and Nevada, with its near 14 percent unemployment rate, have supported the Democrats most enthusiastically in 2010. Perhaps the states with the weakest level of entrepreneurship are the most anxious to vote to transfer tax money to their states from the wealthier states with more profitable economies.