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25-07-2015, 08:14

Congress

Reflecting the political developments of the era, control of Congress from 1929 to 1945 shifted from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party, and Congress enacted major programs increasing the size, cost, and power of the federal government. Changes in American government arising from the New Deal and World War II significantly enhanced the power of the presidency, but Congress nonetheless played a large role in shaping domestic and foreign policy, particularly in the 1930s. Within Congress, power typically resided more with committee chairmen, the “barons” of Capitol Hill, than with the Speaker of the House or the Senate majority leader.

The election of 1928 that sent Herbert C. Hoover to the White House by an overwhelming margin also continued the control of Congress that Republicans had enjoyed in the 1920s. (See table “Party Strength in Congress, 1929-1946” on page 80.) Hoover called Congress into special session in the spring of 1929 to deal with economic issues facing farmers, and within two months, Congress passed the Agricultural Marketing Act. In 1930, Congress also passed the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act, a much-criticized tariff that went beyond Hoover’s wishes by raising protection to the highest levels ever. In the remainder of the year, Congress generally acquiesced in the president’s program to deal with the early stages of the Great Depression.

In the off-year congressional elections of 1930, the Democrats made striking gains. Losing eight senators, Republicans held only a 48-47 edge in the Senate (a Farmer-Labor senator held the other seat). Each party won 217 seats in the House, with one Farmer-Labor representative as the potential decisive vote; but by the time Congress assembled in late 1931, deaths and replacements favoring the Democrats gave them a 220-214 seat majority. Despite the swing to the Democrats, the 1930 election results did not reflect quite such a rejection of Hoover and the Republicans as the totals might suggest, for the turnover of some 50 seats in the House was only about 15 more than the average loss for the incumbent president’s party in off-year elections since 1900. Moreover, the Republicans, who won some 54 percent of the total popular vote for Congress, remained clearly the majority party outside the South. The loss of eight Senate seats, on the other hand, was about twice the usual number for the party holding the presidency and provided an early indication of the impact of the depression on the Republican Party.

The 72nd Congress that met in the final two years of the Hoover presidency only slowly staked out positions much different from Hoover’s. A number of key Democratic leaders were southern conservatives who shared Hoover’s concern about the federal government doing and spending too much. Early in 1932, Congress established at Hoover’s request the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to lend money to banks and other financial institutions to help them weather the depression.

But as the economy continued down and as unemployment continued its sharp rise, Congress became more active. A coalition of Democrats and progressive Republicans, often led in the Senate by New York Democrat Robert F. Wagner, Wisconsin Republican Robert M. La Follette, Jr., and Nebraska Republican George W. Norris, pushed for public works and relief spending. Partly to embarrass Hoover, conservative Democrats also became more assertive and critical of his policies. When Hoover vetoed the Garner-Wagner relief bill, Congress virtually forced upon him the Relief and Reconstruction Act of 1932, a compromise measure enabling the federal government to lend states money for relief and public works. Still, neither Congress nor the Democrats were ready to move much beyond Hoover, as revealed by their refusal to mandate direct relief assistance to the unemployed and by their approval of a record peacetime tax increase in 1932, supported by an emotional plea for balancing the budget by Speaker of the House John Nance Garner.

Democrats overwhelmingly controlled the 73rd Congress following their landslide victory in the election of 1932. Though southern Democrats dominated leadership posts because of their seniority, the new Congress nonetheless proved exceptionally responsive to the agenda of new president Franklin D. Roosevelt—and, in any case, southerners in the House and Senate tended to be more liberal than northerners on domestic economic policy in the early and mid-1930s. Not only did Democrats want to make a positive record to contrast with that of Hoover and the Republicans, but over half of the Democrats in Congress has been elected in 1930 and 1932, and were disposed to following the president and his more liberal policies. Roosevelt effectively used his personal leadership and patronage power to win support in Congress. Above all, the collapse of the economy—unemployment was at least 25 percent by early 1933 and national production and income were down by about 50 percent—compelled action. In the hundred days that produced the so-called First New Deal of 1933, Congress enacted a host of major programs, focusing especially on recovery and relief and including the National Industrial Recovery Act, the Agricultural Adjustment Act, and the Federal Emergency Relief Administration.

The election of 1934 then registered great public support for the New Deal. Counter to the usual trend in off-year elections, Democrats picked up seats in both the House and the Senate. Democratic gains came especially in urban areas, and in the 74th Congress urban liberal Democrats, led by Robert F. Wagner, had more power than before. The Second New Deal enacted by Congress in 1935 reflected the greater strength of liberal Democrats and included such landmark reform legislation as the Emergency Relief Appropriations Act, the National Labor Relations Act (also called the Wagner Act), the Social Security Act, and the Revenue Act of 1935 (or “Wealth Tax”). But while Congress remained remarkably responsive to the president, it also asserted its own priorities. The Wealth Tax, for example, was more limited than Roosevelt had wanted, and Congress (especially Senator Wagner) was much more responsible than Roosevelt for the Wagner Act supporting organized labor.

The election of 1936 gave Democrats their most top-heavy control of Congress ever. Yet even though voters had ratified the New Deal and reelected Roosevelt by a record landslide, Roosevelt achieved little of the expansive program he had in mind for his second term. A conservative coalition of Republicans and conservative Democrats in Congress began to cooperate across party lines to oppose liberal measures. The coalition arose partly from the changing nature of the Democratic Party, increasingly dominated by northern liberals pursuing the agenda of urban liberalism and eclipsing southern, conservative, and rural leaders in the party. The coalition also reflected the continuing strength of conservatism in the nation, a prevailing “antimetropolitan” ideology in a Congress where rural constituencies retained a disproportionate influence, and also a sense that power was shifting too far to the presidency at the expense of the Congress. Roosevelt’s heavyhanded, and ultimately successful, effort to have the Senate elect Kentucky’s Alben Barkley as majority leader over Mississippi’s Pat Harrison further disaffected southern and conservative Democrats in Congress.

A series of events in 1937-38—especially Roosevelt’s court-packing plan, sit-down strikes by labor, and the recession of 1937-1938—brought the formation of the conservative coalition. In November 1937, a bipartisan group led by southern Democrats issued a “Conservative Manifesto,” criticizing the New Deal welfare state and insisting upon lower taxes, balanced budgets, states’ rights, and small government. A varying coalition of Republicans and conservative (mostly southern) Democrats cooperated to oppose key administration proposals beginning with the 1937 court-packing bill. The president did have some limited successes in his second term—the United States Housing Authority, the Farm Security Administration, the Fair Labor Standards Act, and the Executive Reorganization Act, for example—but even they were weaker than proposed. Angered at anti-New Deal Democrats, Roosevelt tried to defeat a number of them in the party’s 1938 primaries. This largely unsuccessful “purge” attempt deepened party divisions and further emboldened conservative Democrats to oppose the president. Then, in the election of 1938, Republicans gained more than 70 seats in the House and seven in the Senate, strengthening not only the OOP’s presence in Congress but also the power of the conservative coalition that stymied Roosevelt’s domestic program.

By the end of the 1930s, foreign policy increasingly commanded attention of Roosevelt and the Congress. Earlier in the decade, Congress had demonstrated its power in foreign policy. With isolationists holding substantial power, the Senate rejected American participation in the World Court, the Nye committee carried out its critical investigation of the munitions industry, and Congress passed the Neutrality Acts that went further than Roosevelt had wanted. As Roosevelt turned to more active and clearly anti-Axis defense and foreign policies during his second term, he needed the support of southern Democrats in Congress, particularly as much of the midwestern and western delegations of both parties remained anti-interventionist. (The priority Roosevelt gave international affairs by the late 1930s and his dependence upon southern Democratic support further limited chances for domestic reform.) After the outbreak of World War II in the late summer of 1939, isolationists lost influence and Congress supported Roosevelt’s initiatives, beginning with the repeal of the arms embargo in 1939. In the next two years, Congress agreed to such key measures as the National Defense Appropriations Act of 1940, the Selective Service Act of 1940, and the Lend-Lease Act of 1941.

For the remainder of Roosevelt’s presidency, Congress largely followed the patterns established from 1937

Fairfield Publishers,

To 1941. Democrats remained the majority party, but the conservative coalition continued to thwart domestic reform. In the election of 1940, Roosevelt won an unprecedented third term, but Democrats picked up only seven House seats and lost three more senators. Then in the election of 1942, Republicans picked up nearly 50 congressional seats and nine seats in the Senate, paring the Democratic majority in the House to just 218-208. Those gains partly reflected the typical off-year pattern of losses by the incumbent party, but they also reflected the more limited appeal of New Deal issues in the context of wartime priorities and prosperity. By the early 1940s, moreover, southern Democrats in Congress had become distinctly more conservative than they had been in the early and mid-1930s and were instrumental in opposing liberal programs.

In this context, such New Deal relief programs as the Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps that now seemed unnecessary were eliminated or slashed. Proposals to expand the New Deal went nowhere, and the National Resources Planning Board, which proposed a far-reaching liberal agenda, was terminated. The most important social legislation Congress passed was the GI Bill of Rights, but that was enacted more as a politically popular reward to veterans than as a piece of domestic reform. As the war came to an end, Congress also ensured generous reconversion policies for business. Yet even the conservative 78th Congress that met from 1943 to 1944 did not seriously attack the heart of the New Deal regulatory welfare state. Democrats gained two dozen House seats but lost two more in the Senate in the election of 1944, but neither those results nor Roosevelt’s fourth-term reelection altered domestic policymaking.

In defense and foreign policy, Congress continued largely to go along with the president’s requests during World War II. Although often justifiably critical of early disorganization and inefficiency in the mobilization programs, and frequently complaining about excessive executive power, Congress nonetheless gave Roosevelt great leeway to establish agencies and implement policies to spur production, mobilize manpower, and check inflation. Such important new agencies as the War Production Board, the Office of War Mobilization, and the Office of Price Administration had little congressional involvement. Congress played an even smaller role in military and foreign policy, whereas commander in chief Roosevelt had extraordinary authority. In planning postwar foreign policy, on the other hand, Roosevelt did have to play close attention to the Senate’s authority over treaties in working toward such postwar international organizations as the United Nations and the economic agencies coming out of the Bretton Woods ConfERENce.

Trends established during Roosevelt’s presidency persisted after 1945. Particularly in foreign policy, Congress typically responded to the president’s agenda rather than taking the lead itself. The executive branch was larger, better organized, and more powerful than before. Changes in the NEWs media contributed to enhancing the power of the presidency, for radio (and later television) allowed the president to address the nation and mobilize support more effectively than could the Congress or its individual members. But while the dynamics of policymaking shifted toward the presidency in the 1929-45 era, Congress had by no means been eclipsed. It retained its essential legislative authority on both foreign and domestic policy, and the conservative coalition continued during Harry Truman’s presidency and after (until briefly in the mid-1960s) to thwart liberal efforts to expand the regulatory-welfare state established in the 1930s.

Further reading: Richard N. Chapman, Contours of Public Policy, 1939-1945 (New York: Garland, 1981); James T. Patterson, Congressional Conservatism and the New Deal: The Growth of the Conservative Coalition in Congress, 1933-1939 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1967); David L. Porter, Congress and the Waning of the New Deal (Port Washington, N. Y.: Kennikat Press, 1980); Howard L. Reiter, “The Building of a Bifactional Structure: The Democrats in the 1940s,” Political Science Quarterly, 116, no. 1 (Spring 2001): 107-129; Clyde P. Weed, Nemesis of Reform: The Republican Party during the New Deal (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994); Roland Young, Congressional Politics in the Second World War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1956).