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

The first thing I'd like to address is, "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. " This does not make someone a big government type, contacting people and asking them to work faster on projects that are already approved and funded isn't evidence for anything. My opponent then goes on to talk about the tax cuts that Hoover supported (not exactly big government) and the doubling of resources for public works. However, what my opponent leaves out, is that Hoover, for all but his final year, adamantly maintained a balanced budget, and so cut other things to keep it balanced. And we can see in the historical records of government spending [1], that the budget stayed balanced. My opponent then goes on to say that Public-works spending increased over 50% under Hoover, however he links to a website about the 2009 stimulus costing more than the Iraqi war, and this number is not located anywhere in this source. However, as already pointed out, Hoover would cut spending from other government sources to balance this out. Between 1929 and 1932 the total non-military government spending only increased 6.4%, with a 50% CUT to welfare. One of my opponent's claims that absolutely must be addressed is his claim that Hoover had a $3 billion public-works plan. This is unsourced, and when searching for it, I cannot find any objective source for it. Every source is either the Rothbard book, or a Mises blog repeating the book, but nothing close to objective or unbiased. But we can see that it is not even close to accurate. The entire government's revenue was only around $4 billion dollar, so any $3 billion spending spree would be easily visible in the numbers. Now, maybe they were talking about $3 billion over 10 years. However, that would still mean $300 million a year, which we would also see in the budget, and it would be suggesting that Rothbard and my opponent were manipulating data to make it appear different than it is. Moving on to my opponent's claims on the budget and spending. My opponent is cherry picking data, namely years that will appear to prove his case. And example is the deficit he lists is $2.7 billion at the end of Hoover's term. And talks about the increase in government spending, but he only lists selected years. This gives a false impression. Now, I also gave only selective years, but that was because the growth was average over those years. And now I have the space to look at each year. So let's look at Total spending, Total non-military spending, Total deficit for each year of Hoover's presidency, including the year before and after. Year____ Total Spending___ Total non-military___ Total deficit 1928____ $3.668 billion____ $2.380 billion_______ $661 million surplus 1929____ $3.809 billion____ $2.437 billion_______ $478 million surplus 1930____ $3.956 billion____ $2.493 billion_______ $874 million surplus 1931____ $4.108 billion____ $2.545 billion_______ $129 million deficit 1932____ $4.266 billion____ $2.594 billion_______ $1,632 million deficit 1933____ $5.103 billion____ $3.727 billion_______ $1,843 million deficit As everyone can see, no heavy government increases in spending or size took place until the 1933 year [1]. We can even go to one of my opponent's sources that he linked that says, "Hoover promised in February 1931 that if hunger and suffering could not otherwise be prevented, "I will ask the aid of every resource of the Federal government. "… acting out of his Quaker faith and upbringing, he had looked to voluntary, rational acts of compassion and social reformation on the part of the spiritually enlightened. Hoover, it seems, believed that in times of crisis, citizens would take this kind of initiative. " [2] Note, that Hoover made that comment 1 ï¿½ years after the collapse, not right after. Now in summary, I'd like to say that my opponent, over the course of this debate focused almost entirely on 1932 and 1933, and a bit on 1931. Over the entire debate, he only pointed to one thing in 1930, and it was something that Hoover had promised back before the collapse and something that he did not support. Why do I make this point? As I said from the beginning, Hoover responded to the economic crisis with very little action, it wasn't until he saw that doing little to nothing was not working that he embraced Keynes philosophy. If we go to the comment section, where my opponent and I talked about our BOPs, my opponent said, "Con must prove that he was a proponent of those things and that that's how he tried to deal with the Depression. " I have shown that Hoover first attempted to deal with the depression by doing as little as possible, and only after that did not work, did he try a different approach. The numbers of government spending prove this and the fact that my opponent has focused on things done several years after the depression, rather than actions done right after it only adds to that proof. Thank you [1] . http://www.usgovernmentspending.com... [2] . http://www.presidentprofiles.com...-