General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Why I didn't listen... [View all]FarLeftFist
(6,161 posts)FDR invited a group of physicians and private interests to work with his other appointees on a proposal to add health care to the Social Security Act. The invited special interest group, called the Committee on the Costs of Medical Care (CCMC), worked mostly in secret, isolated from public input and debate. The committee ultimately recommended a watered-down proposal of giving federal subsidies to states for health care programs. However, Roosevelt so feared attacks by the American Medical Association that he dropped health coverage completely from his New Deal agenda. Truman also tried and failed to bring about national health care, as did Bill Clinton. Obamas plan covers 32 million previously uninsured Americans.
His Social Security bill had built-in exclusions that exempted nearly half of the working population from benefits, namely two-thirds of African Americans and about half of women. Furthermore, FDRs New Deal employment programs discriminated against blacks and he was too scared of political backlash to support either an anti-lynching bill or a bill to abolish the poll tax, despite urging from First Lady Eleanor.
Not to mention he rounded up American citizens and put them in internment camps. Progressive?
Truman, who is seen as a Progressive pioneer, is responsible for a near apocalypse in two Japanese cities. Trumans decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki resulted in 150,000-246,000 deaths within four months, almost all of them innocent civilians, not to mention the maimings and long-term illnesses. Many years later, Truman said about the bombings: I have no regrets and, under the same circumstances, I would do it again.
In 1948, Congress succeeded in its third attempt to pass tax cuts for the wealthy, this time over Trumans veto. Truman may have done what was humanly possible to prevent those tax cuts, but he did face controversy for pardoning at least two tax evaders: George Parr and George A. Caldwell.
With LBJ first there was Vietnam, then LBJ believed he had the right to intervene unilaterally to support the overthrow of left-wing, democratically elected President Juan Bosch of the Dominican Republic and João Goulart of Brazil in order to maintain authoritarian, anti-communist rulers in Latin America.
So who is this holier-than-thou Progressive you are holding Obama standard to? Remember also, FDR had 377 House seats and 73 Senate seats. While not to take anything away from their progressive accomplishments you can see how it is unreasonable to compare Obama's 3 yrs to their full terms.