KILL THE GOP TALKING POINT #1 - "The New Deal Prolonged the Recession"

[Taverner]

Obama and the Democrats need to kill this talking point right away.

One just look at the stats - 1932=~20% unemployment, 1937=~10% unemployment

We need to spread this wide and far

[bdamomma]

1. I think I heard this on Chris Matthews last nite on how the unemployment stats went down

under Roosevelt.

[Taverner]

3. I heard it on KO too

And I double checked the stat, and sure enough, unemployment went down during FDR

[EstimatedProphet]

2. It prolonged the recession by making it shorter!

If we hadn't had the New Deal, the recession would have lasted longer, so it would have ended earlier!

Why even bother trying to refute what is obviously a lie?

[Taverner]

4. Dude, you just made my head spin so much it done fell off

[havocmom]

5. Trickel-Down Economics dismantled the New Deal almost 30 years ago

The New Deal built a great economy until the powers that be refused to take energy self-sufficiency seriously and Big Oil/Bad Arab Potentates siphoned too much money and the GOP started treating the working/middle classes as their personal toilets

[FormerDittoHead]

6. I always like the 'conclusion' they draw about WWII...

I appreciate the improvement of employment from 20% to 10%, but that didn't bring us what we now know as "The Good Old Days"...

They'll say "The New Deal" didn't get us out of the Depression, it was World War II!

And they're right, but the implied conclusion demonstrates the difference between them and us.

First off, YES, it was WWII which did it, because it GREATLY *EXPANDED* GOVERNMENT SPENDING!

But Conservatives, you see, live in an alternative universe. You see, they'll skip right past that little factoid and jump to the conclusion that it was MILITARY SPENDING AND WAR which did it - NOT "SOCIAL" PROGRAMS....

And it's a staggeringly stupid conclusion, because somewhere in their little heads they think that building billion dollar planes which don't work and won't be used somehow stimulates the economy more than repairing roads and investing in new technology!

But they think it's OK, you see, because they see giving the money to white men to build useless things as being much better than it getting into the hands of "welfare Moms".