Fair Deal

Fair Deal Beginning in September 1945, Harry S Truman had recommended that Congress enact numerous laws concerning employment conditions and social problems, to which he gave the name Fair Deal on 5 January 1949. This agenda was intended as a second-generation New Deal, and included a higher minimum wage, broader coverage for Social Security (see Social Security Administration), pro-labor legislation, federal subsidies for public housing, sponsorship of scientific research, a system of national health care, civil rights legislation, expanded soil conservation programs, agricultural subsidies, federal grants to education, and renewed spending on dams, power-generating stations, and other public works. Republicans took over both houses of Congress in 1946, and so much of the Fair Deal languished until Truman’s election triumph in 1948, when Democrats regained Congress. Congress then provided money for the Housing Act (1949), hydroelectric power stations, western land reclamation, farm subsidies, and it created the National Science Foundation. Truman failed to win aid for national health insurance, education, civil rights legislation, and either a fair employment commission or repeal of the Taft–Hartley Act.