The notion of a president’s “100 Day” agenda comes from the beginning of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first term. The Depression was well into its fourth year; one in four Americans was unemployed; around the world, fascists and communists were making political gains as the most powerful nations struggled to regain economic footing.
Day One fell on March 4, 1933, when Roosevelt told Americans that all they had to fear was fear itself — “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”
"I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require,” he said.
The next day, he called Congress into a special 90-day session.
First he ended the run on banks. Congress (boosted by big Senate and House Democratic Party majorities) passed in a day legislation allowing banks to reopen under Treasury Department licenses that guaranteed their soundness; if a bank lacked funds, the Federal Reserve Board would lend cash against the bank’s assets.
“I can assure you that it is safer to keep your money in a reopened bank than under the mattress,” FDR told Americans by radio in his first “fireside chat.” When banks reopened, deposits exceeded withdrawals by $10 million in a single day.
His second bill cut federal government salaries by 15 percent, cut veterans benefits. This won over some fiscal conservatives, including Republicans: “I’m for giving the president whatever he wants,” said Sen. Arthur Capper of Kansas.
He soon submitted the Glass-Steagall Act, which prevented banks from trading stocks and securities; gave the Federal Reserve Board authority to set interest rates; and created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to guarantee individual bank deposits, assuring citizens their money would be protected.
He aimed to rein in Wall Street excess by submitting the Truth in Securities Act, requiring public companies to provide investors with financial and other corporate information while prohibiting misrepresentations and fraud.
“If the country is to flourish,” said Roosevelt, “capital must be invested in enterprise. But those who seek to draw upon other people’s money must be wholly candid regarding the facts on which the investor’s judgment is asked.”
He stabilized the urban housing market by establishing the Home Owners Loan Corporation, which bought distressed home mortgages; loaned money for taxes and repairs; and set repayment schedules over 30-year terms at 5 percent interest. The corporation soon assumed one in six U.S. home mortgages.
Within eight days he submitted legislation farmers had sought for decades. Under the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, food processors, distributors, and speculators would be taxed; proceeds would pay farmers to take acreage out of circulation, reversing the incentives that had led to massive food surpluses, rock-bottom prices. Farmers were given incentives to modernize equipment, use innovative methods.
Along with the bill he sent a five-paragraph message to Congress, telling legislators action to support farmers was as important as saving banks. The goal: “to re-establish prices to farmers at a level … equivalent to the purchasing power … in the pre-war period.” Would it work? FDR didn’t know: “I tell you frankly that it is a new and untrod path,” but “an unprecedented condition calls for the trial of new means.” If it didn’t work, he promised to try again.
Progressives convinced him within three weeks to do more. He sent a bill to refinance farm mortgages at 4.5 percent and to extend the term to repay, a plan backed by $2 billion (sums undreamt of by FDR’s predecessor, Herbert Hoover). Why would banks do it? They could swap unpaid mortgages (of little short-term value) for Federal Land Bank bonds paying guaranteed interest of 4 percent.
Progressives also convinced FDR to take the U.S. off the gold standard, helping farmers sell products at lower prices overseas. Creditors no longer had the right to demand payment in gold. He ordered owners of gold coins, bullion, and certificates to turn them over to the Federal Reserve for a set price (about $21 per ounce), giving the Fed $770 million. This allowed the bank to inflate the nation’s money supply — a key to the Keynesian economic theory that the best way to fight economic downturns, when business investment dries up, is to boost government spending.
The bill passed on Day 69.
Overall, FDR in his first three months won passage of 15 major bills, including the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, to give states, counties, and cities aid for the jobless; the Works Progress Administration, replacing the short-term FERA with longer-term federal projects; the Civil Works Administration, to create manual-labor jobs during the winter of 1933-34; the Public Works Administration, to build infrastructure like water projects, power plants, and hospitals; the Civilian Conservation Corps, to give jobs to youth; the Tennessee Valley Authority, an economic development agency to boost development in an especially hard-hit region; and the National Industrial Recovery Act, authorizing the government to regulate some industries to create fair wages and prices, thus directing economic gains to the middle class and poor; guaranteeing labor’s right to bargain collectively; stipulating that industry codes should set minimum wages and maximum hours; and boosting the economy with $3.3 billion for public works.
California Sen. Hiram Johnson, a Republican, said, “We have exchanged for a frown in the White House a smile. Where there were hesitation and vacillation, weighing always the personal political consequences, feebleness, timidity, and duplicity, there are now courage and boldness and real action.”
"Never before had a president converted so many promises into so much legislation so quickly," wrote historian James McGregor Burns.
Should Joe Biden win election, even under ideal conditions for Democrats, little legislation of this impact will be possible in 2021. In an era of continual electioneering; after three decades of political pollution by right-wing media; and following four years of Trump, gone is the era when political scientist Richard Neustadt could write, “Most Americans wish their new president well and want him to succeed, with partisanship relatively low, interest in him relatively high, and interest fueled by curiosity about him in his new, never-before-seen capacity, not as one party's candidate but as the country's magistrate.”
Biden ran about seventh on my list of primary candidates. Count me among progressives skeptical of both his political acumen and his instinct for political sail trimming, learned over decades in the Senate. His career has demonstrated more interest in legal and foreign policy matters than the domestic economy. He excited few primary voters who pined for Bernie Sanders- or Elizabeth Warren-style populist dynamism.
That said, Sanders (especially) gets credit (or blame, depending on your outlook) for pulling the Democratic Party further to the left than it’s been since — well, probably 1933. If political winds favoring the party continue, notably in Senate races in Colorado, Arizona, Montana, North Carolina, and Maine, Biden could be leading Democratic majorities in both House and Senate, giving progressives legislative hope for the first time since 2009. It’s worth contemplating, then, the man’s agenda.
— Raise the minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 an hour. Biden has long supported this issue, which polls well; states and localities that have raised wages have not seen the economic pitfalls promised by corporatists.
— More federal money for community colleges, cutting or eliminating tuitions while boosting grants for infrastructure. He also wants to double the maximum size of federal Pell Grants for poor students, which could cut student debt.
— Triple annual federal spending on low-income school districts, from $16 billion to $48 billion. This would be vital in an era when states and local governments are likely to implement huge cuts in school funding.
— Rebuild the Affordable Care Act, including by adding a public insurance option, which would lower costs on insurance exchange markets for those not insured through their jobs — a demographic that now includes tens of millions of additional Americans.
— His opioid policy is the most ambitious of any Democrat who ran for president, taxing pharmaceutical profits to raise $125 billion over a decade to boost addiction treatment and recovery programs. (That’s $25 billion more than Warren proposed.)
— Two major federal housing plans: 1). Three in four low-income families who could qualify for Section 8 housing benefits don’t receive them. Biden would make the program an entitlement, like Medicaid or SNAP (food stamps), meaning all eligible families would get help. 2). Send more federal transportation funding to states that commit to land use programs that cut regulations which restrict housing construction.
— Biden’s stances on climate change will excite few on the left, with the exception of organized labor leaders. As with immigration, he could enact few substantial changes without bipartisan legislation. But his support for at least three items gain him labor support while hurting him with environmentalists: federal funds for research into carbon capture; support for nuclear power; and no short-term ban on fracking.
Biden’s no FDR; but his agenda is more left-wing than most left-wingers might believe.
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