From: The Thom Hartmann Show, December 4, 2007:
Wendell Willkie, Republican, running against Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940:
I believe that the forces of free enterprise must be regulated. I am opposed to business monopolies. I believe in the right to collective bargaining by labor, without any interference, and full protection of that obvious right. I believe in minimum standards for wages and maximum standards for hours, and I believe that such standards should constantly improve. I am in favor of the regulation of interstate utilities, of banking, of the securities markets. I believe in federal pensions, in adequate old age benefits, and old age allowances. I believe that the federal government owes a duty to adjust the position of the farmer with that of the manufacturer. If this cannot be done by parity prices, then some other method must be found without too much regimentation of the farmers’ affairs.
Ronald Reagan, Democrat, in 1948:
The profits of corporations have doubled while workers’ wages have increased only one quarter. In other words, profits have gone up four times as fast as wages, and the small increases that workers did receive was more than eaten up by rising prices, which have also bored into their savings. For example, here’s an Associated Press dispatch I read the other day about Smith L. Carpenter, a craftsman in Union Springs, New York. Seems that Mr. Carpenter retired some years ago thinking that he had enough money saved up so that he could live out his final years without having to worry. But he didn’t figure on this Republican inflation, which ate up all his savings. And so he’s gone back to work. The reason this is news is because Mr. Carpenter is 91 years old. Now take it to contrast the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, which had a net profit of $210 million dollars, after taxes, for the first half of 1948 – an increase of 70% in one year. In other words, high prices have not been caused by higher wages, but by bigger and bigger profits.
The Republican promises sounded pretty good in 1946. But what has happened since then, since the 80th Congress took over? Prices have climbed to the highest level in history, although the death of the OPA was supposed to bring prices down through “the natural process of free competition”.
Labor has been handcuffed by the vicious Tart-Hartley law. Social Security benefits have been snatched away from almost a million workers by the Gerhardt Bill. Fair employment practices, which had worked so well during war time, have been abandoned. Veterans’ pleas for low-cost homes have been ignored, and many people are still living in made-over chicken coops and garages. Tax reduction bills have been passed to benefit the higher income brackets alone. The average worker saves only $1.73 per week. In the false name of economy, millions of children have been deprived of milk once provided through the Federal School Lunch Program.
This was the payoff of the Republican promises, and this is why we must have new faces in the Congress of the United States. Democratic faces. This is why we must elect not only President Truman, but also men like Mayor Hubert Humphrey of Minneapolis, the Democratic candidate for senator from Minnesota.
Piece of Mindful 