Why Were People Not Happy with the New Deal?

The New Deal was a group of U.S. government programs of the 1930s. President Franklin D. Roosevelt started the programs to help the country recover from the economic problems of the Great Depression. Roosevelt’s New Deal required heavy regulation of business and industry with the inclusion of spending millions of the nation’s money on public works (putting them into massive debt).

   Many people were against Roosevelt’s decision to use federal money to bring the country out of the depression. They saw going into national debt a bigger crisis than their failing economies. They wanted to understand how using federal money for these programs would help the country if the national debt increased. In addition, other people were unhappy about the New Deal because they were frustrated about the involvement of the government in the American business and economy industries. They felt that the government had no power to intervene in American industries. On the other hand, while many got upset that Roosevelt was getting too involved in business regulation, a handful of people disagreed with them and said that Roosevelt wasn’t getting involved enough. Clearly, Roosevelt’s lack of communication caused there to be a lot of disagreements with his New Deal plan and his style/ methods of reconstruction.

   Besides average Americans who were in discontent with the new deal, Father Coughlin and Huey Long, two well- known and powerful people during the time of the Great Depression, also disagreed with part of the New Deal. Father Coughlin started his campaign along side Roosevelt supporting his New Deal. But when Roosevelt refused to nationalize the banking system and provide for the free coinage of silver, Coughlin switched his opinion on Roosevelt and the New Deal. What also aided Coughlin's switch in view about Roosevelt pertaining to the topic of banking was that Coughlin was openly anti- Semitic and was against Roosevelt protecting Jewish bankers. Huey Long, like Father Coughlin, started on Roosevelt's side. But once Long became a big-shot lawyer, he started to use federal money for unnecessary projects. he used the money to build projects in poor parts of America and gained traction which he then used to threaten Roosevelt (In terms of competition in a future presidential election).

    All in all, though Roosevelt's New Deal was a plan to bring the country out of a depression, it was a plan that not everyone accepted. These critics and points of criticism was used my Roosevelt to create a Second New Deal.