In retrospect, we can divide the period after the war into two distinct ideological eras. No precise dividing line can be given; however, it is clear that the period from the end of the war to, say, 1976 was a liberal era—an era in which arguments to expand federal government programs, especially civilian programs, or to create new ones received a sympathetic hearing from the general public. Even Republican presidents had to accommodate themselves to a dominant liberal ideology. Then, for a variety of reasons—the war in Vietnam, slowing economic growth, and accelerating inflation—sentiment turned toward the conservatives. Even Democratic presidents had to respond to the public’s growing concerns about the costs of expanding government and over-regulation of the private sector.
During the liberal era, Democrats pressed hard for an expansion of the welfare state and other New Deal reforms while conservatives fought a rearguard action, delaying the advance of the welfare state when they could, and retreating to new positions when they could not. The first postwar president, Democrat Harry S. Truman, favored a major expansion of the New Deal. Truman’s program, which he named the Fair Deal, called for a wide range of economic legislation, including repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act (which regulated labor unions), increased Social Security benefits, a higher minimum wage, federal subsidies for housing, compulsory federal health insurance, and authority to build industrial plants to overcome “shortages.”111
Some parts of Truman’s program, those that were extensions and modifications of existing programs, were enacted—Social Security benefits were extended, and the minimum wage was raised—but new programs were blocked by a congressional coalition of Republicans and southern Democrats. Special interest groups played an important role in lobbying Congress to oppose legislation they considered contrary to their particular interests. The American Medical Association, for example, lobbied vigorously against Truman’s health insurance proposals, which they denounced as the forerunner of “socialized medicine.”
The philosophy of Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower’s administration generally opposed new initiatives in the economic sphere. The administration’s motto, “less government in business and more business in government,” summed up its philosophy, but existing programs around which a consensus had formed continued to expand. For example, Social Security benefits increased and were extended to more workers, the minimum wage was raised from $0.75 to $1.00 per hour, more money was provided for housing, and a greatly expanded program of highway building was introduced to replace America’s congested single-lane highways with two-lane interstate “super highways.”
World History
