Herbert Hoover, Forgotten Progressive: the 31st President Was a Big Govt. Market Interventionist

I apologize for the unintended forfeit. At first I was going to post my round in the comment section, but since my opponent apparently doesn't go on debate.org on weekends, it would have left him with barely any time to respond. In order to avoid potential unnecessary complications I decided to just continue in the last round and treat this like a 3 round debate. Again I apologize to my opponent for any inconveniences. Now, to rebut my opponent's arguments. First and foremost: public works projects. While I concede the specific public works projects and Hoover's involvement in them, Hoover certainly supported massive government spending on public works throughout his entire political career, and especially his presidency. Just to reiterate something I said before, after the Stock Market crash, Hoover ordered federal departments to speed up construction projects. He contacted all forty-eight state governors to make a similar appeal for expanded public works. He went to Congress with a $160 million tax cut, coupled with a doubling of resources for public buildings and dams, highways and harbors. [1] Even beforehand in late 1928, after he was elected president, Hoover presented a public works scheme, the "Hoover Plan" for "permanent prosperity," for a pact to "outlaw depression," to the Conference of Governors. Hoover had adopted the scheme of the well-known inflationists Foster and Catchings, for a mammoth $3 billion public-works plan to "stabilize" business cycles. In early 1931 Hoover signed the Wagner-Graham Stabilization Act, which set up the Federal Stabilization Board to initiate public works such as dams and highways. [2] In 1932 he created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) to help save the banking and railroad systems. Loans offered under the program funded public works projects and the first federally-supported housing projects. Originally intended to combat the Depression, the RFC lasted 21 years and was authorized to finance public works projects, provide loans to farmers and victims of natural disasters, and assist school districts. [3] As Hoover recalls about his transformation of the Department of Commerce into what he deemed "the economic interpreter to the American people (and they badly need one)", "We developed cooperation between the federal, state, and municipal governments to increase public works. We persuaded employers to "divide" time among their employees so that as many as possible would have some incomes. We organized the industries to undertake renovation, repair, and, where possible, expand construction." [4] Public-works spending increased over 50% under Hoover, and the money went to building bridges, roads, etc. [5] Next, about Smoot Hawley. My opponent minimizes Hoover's involvement in the interventionist, protectionist Smoot Hawley Tariff, saying that "he was just too spineless to stand against his own party and say no." First of all, even if this was totally true, it wouldn't change the fact that he signed the bill into law. His spinelessness doesn't change the fact that he played a role in massive market intervention. But furthermore, as I said previously, Hoover was urged not to sign the bill by over 1000 prominent economists. Additionally, automobile executiv Henry Ford spent an entire evening at the White House trying to convince Hoover to veto he bill, calling it an "economic stupidity." And J.P. Morgan's chief executive Thomas W. Lamont said he "almost went down on my knees to beg Herbert Hoover to veto the asinine Hawley-Smoot Tariff." And as I said before, Hoover actually defended the interventionist policies against Roosevelt's critiques, in turn criticizing Roosevelt for wanting Americans to "compete with "peasant and sweated labor abroad." On the subject of federal budgets, surpluses, and deficits: My opponent claims Hoover was a "rock solid balanced budget man." But this is far from the truth. Hoover actually ran up massive deficits, as the federal Office of Management and Budget notes. And he inherited a huge budget surplus, which he soon turned into a deficit. By the end of his first term, the deficit had reached $2.7 billion - the third-largest budget deficit America had ever experienced. Hoover increased government spending from $3.1 billion to $4.7 billion in a failed effort to stimulate the economy. And he increased marginal tax rates to 63 percent. [6] Between Hoover's budget for the fiscal year 1930, and fiscal year 1933, the budget balance went from a surplus of 0.8% of GDP to a deficit of 4.5%. While this reflected in part a drop in revenues from 4.2% of GDP in 1930 to 3.5% in FY 1933, it mainly reflected an increase in spending from 3.4% in fiscal year 1930 to 8.0% in fiscal year 1933 - an unprecedented amount of increase at the time. [7] Herbert Hoover increased the deficit more than any other President in peace time. [7] As Murray Rothbard says, "If we define "New Deal" as an antidepression program marked by extensive governmental economic planning and intervention-including bolstering of wage rates and prices, expansion of credit, propping up of weak firms, and increased government spending (e.g., subsidies to unemployment and public works)-Herbert Clark Hoover must be considered the founder of the New Deal in America. Hoover, from the very start of the depression, set his course unerringly toward the violation of all the laissez-faire canons. As a consequence, he left office with the economy at the depths of an unprecedented depression, with no recovery in sight after three and a half years, and with unemployment at the terrible and unprecedented rate of 25 percent of the labor force." [from source 4]. For a decade, Herbert Hoover had urged that the United States break its age-old policy of not intervening in cyclical recessions. During the postwar 1920–1921 recession, Hoover, as secretary of commerce, had unsuccessfully urged President Harding to intervene massively in the recession, to "do something" to cure the depression, in particular to expand credit and to engage in a massive public-works program. Although the United States got out of the recession on its own, without massive intervention, Hoover vowed that next time it would be different. And it was, when he had a bigger role in it. Hoover continually championed market intervention, big government, anti-laissez faire policies. And as a result, he left the country in the worst economic crisis it has ever faced to this very day. Was Hoover a total proponent of Keynesian policies? No, and I didn't claim he was, and Keynes is more or less irrelevant to this debate. However, Hoover advocated credit expansion and public works programs to ameliorate recessions, just like Keynes. And this can hardly be called laissez-faire. Certainly, it cannot be said that the traditional approach toward understanding Hoover is true: that he did nothing as his country spiraled downward into economic peril. Indeed, it is clear that Hoover did everything he could on behalf of himself and the Federal Government to intervene and save the country from the Depression. In the process, however, he ended up causing it. I'll conclude with a quote from Rexford Guy Tugwell, one of the architects of Franklin Roosevelt's policies in the 1930s: "We didn't admit it at the time, but practically the whole New Deal was extrapolated from programs that Hoover started." [1] http://www.hoover.archives.gov... [2] http://www.presidentprofiles.com... [3] http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu... [4] http://mises.org... [5] http://radocracy.com... [6] http://www.washingtonpost.com... [7] http://www.csmonitor.com...