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[...] No one grew the size of government, taxation
and spending in peacetime the way Roosevelt did, Powell said.
“FDR tripled taxes and spending more than doubled
from 1933 to 1940,” Powell said. “That was the biggest increase in
peacetime spending in American history. Before that, the biggest
increases in spending came during wars.”
Further, the New Deal did not bring the economy
back and prolonged recovery, Powell said, as unemployment was still at
17 percent by 1940, before war spending began to pull the country out
of the depression.
“There were a number of New Deal policies that make
it harder and more expensive to hire people,” Powell continued.
“Compulsory unionism made it more costly to hire people. The more
expensive something is the less you get of it. The more you subsidize
something, the more you have of it.”
Despite the $500 billion spent under FDR through
various programs, the unemployment rate in the United States did not
significantly decrease until after the U.S. officially entered World
War II in 1941, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) records
from 1929 through 1944. [Obama:
FDR Was 'Fiscally Conservative']
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