Title: Guess What? The New Deal Worked! | Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective
Headings: 
Connecting History
Milestones
Hot off the Press
History Talk
Guess What? The New Deal Worked!
by Steven Conn on Feb 16, 2009

Content: The legacy that FDR created proved remarkably successful and remarkably enduring. The New Deal operated at three levels: first, the programs established by the New Deal worked immediately to bring economic relief; second, the long-term changes the New Deal made to the structure of our economy brought the cycles of the economy under better control; and, finally, the New Deal re-shaped the social contract between our citizens and our government. We usually associate the New Deal with the programs it created to put people to work, such as the Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps. Republicans hated these programs. They denounced the WPA as “We Putter Around.” The new Republican National Committee chairman, Michael Steele, recently parroted this accusation when he tried to explain that the government never creates jobs, just work. But the New Deal did provide jobs to hundreds of thousand of unemployed Americans, and while they “puttered” those workers managed to build tens of thousands of bridges, paved countless miles of roads, and planted 3 billion trees.