Which fiscal policies of the ’30s were a disaster, Rick?
Politico reports:
Responding to a POLITICO story headlined, ‘Is Rick Perry dumb?’, the Texas governor said Tuesday afternoon that what he considers ‘dumb’ are President Obama’s policies.
‘What’s dumb is to oversee an economy that has lost that many millions of jobs, to put unemployment numbers that over his four years will stay probably at 9 percent, to downgrade the credit of this good country, to put fiscal policies in place that were a disaster back in the ’30s and to try them again in the 2000s,’ Perry said on Sean Hannity’s radio show. ‘That’s what I consider to be the definition of dumb.’
I can’t be sure, but I’ll assume that when Perry talked about the disastrous fiscal policies of the 1930s, he was referring to those of Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt (who was president for the last seven years of the decade) rather than those of Republican Herbert Hoover (who was president for the first three).
However if you judge the success or failure of policies by the unemployment rate, as Perry seems to be doing, you have to wonder which president’s policies (or lack of policies) were more disastrous.
Under Hoover, unemployment went from 8.7% in 1930 to 15.9% in 1931 and 23.6% in 1932. Hoover was president until March 4, 1933, when Roosevelt was sworn in.
Under Roosevelt, unemployment when from 24.9% in 1933 to 21.7% in 1934, 20.1% in 1935, 16.9% in 1936, 14.3% in 1937, 19.0% in 1938 and 17.2% in 1939.
Although there is disagreement over what caused unemployment to spike in 1938, it is likely that an important factor was a sharp reduction in government spending in 1937.
World War II ultimately ended the Depression and reduced unemployment to 1.2 percent by 1944.
So if Perry gets the Republican nomination, will he run against Obama-the-latter-day-FDR?
If you want to understand why Perry’s politics are in some ways a radical departure even from the conservatism of George W. Bush, consider what Bush was willing to do during the economic meltdown of 2008. He didn’t hesitate to push through the TARP bank bailout which Perry opposed.