14. Roosevelt launches the second New Deal in 1935
In Roosevelt’s annual message to Congress in January 1935, what is now the television extravaganza known as the State of the Union Address, he announced five goals and initiatives for the nation to achieve. Newspaper columnists and radio pundits quickly labeled FDR’s plans as the Second New Deal, in many cases derisively. Roosevelt called for a national work relief program to deal with unemployment (the WPA); the rehabilitation of urban slums; a system of Social Security for the elderly and infirm, security against unemployment; and a better means of exploiting America’s natural resources. Roosevelt faced an increasingly wary Congress, which viewed the extension of the Executive Branch as an encroachment on its own power, and several setbacks in the courts to his original programs, despite the success of several in curbing the worst of the Great Depression.
He also faced the rise of Nazi Germany, the continuing aggression of the Empire of Japan, and the need to improve America’s defensive posture. Roosevelt was the head of state of the only modern nation in the world which lacked any sort of program to ensure the financial security of its elderly. In proposing the Social Security Administration, Roosevelt insisted that the program be funded through payroll taxes, rather than the general fund, (which he needed to conserve for other purposes) at a time when the United States did not yet deduct income tax withholding from pay checks. Federal income tax withholding did not begin until the United States was involved in the Second World War. But Roosevelt stuck to his guns in Social Security taxes, later stating, “We put those payroll contributions there so as to give the contributors a legal, moral, and political right to collect their pensions and unemployment benefits”.