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Handout 1Print Handout 1

Franklin Roosevelt’s Address before the Conference on Mobilization for Human Needs

September 8, 1933

...As you know, the many Governments in the United States−the Federal Government, the forty-eight State Governments, and the tens of thousands of Local Governments−are doing their best to meet what has been in many ways one of the most serious crises in history. On the whole, they have done well. The Federal Government cannot, by any means, accomplish the task alone. The Government has, during these past months, entered into many fields of human endeavor that it has never participated in before.

I believe we Americans do not wish to see a permanent extension of purely Government operations carried to the extent of relieving us of our individual responsibilities as citizens, and it is with that thought in mind that very early in this Administration we laid down in regard to one portion of this great picture a somewhat simple rule.

When we came to the problem of meeting the emergency of human needs, we did not rush blindly in and say, “The Government will take care of it.” We approached it from the other angle first. We said to the people of this country, “When you come to the problem of relief, you face the individual family, the individual man, woman and child who lives in a particular locality and the first objective and the first necessity are that the citizens of that community, through the churches, the Community Chest, the social and charitable organizations of the community, are going to be expected to do their share to their utmost extent first.”

Then we come to this second need or objective and that is the participation of local government in the additional need. We demand that local government shall do its share to the utmost, and then, if that is not sufficient, if those two features do not meet the needs, we come to the next unit, the State, and if that still is not enough, if the State has done everything it reasonably should do, then obviously the Federal Government must step in, because, while it isn’t written in the Constitution, nevertheless, it is the inherent duty of the Federal Government to keep its citizens from starvation.

...The point I want to make is this: You have a very great opportunity, not merely to keep people from starving. You have a further opportunity of inculcating the understanding that we have to build from the bottom up -- not merely to supply food from the top down. There will be a tendency this year in obtaining the wherewithal for local relief for people to say, “We can't do it.” I believe they can do it, bigger this year and more generously, more successfully this year than they could last. Taking it by and large, the country is in a much more hopeful frame of mind. People have more money to spend and more time in which to do it. It isn’t only the fact that a great many people have already been put back to work, the fact that people of property have been getting more from rents; there are fewer defaults on bonds and mortgages…

...I think you must go into this campaign with the right to expect greater success this year than last. Tell everybody that we are a little bit like the old railroad train that has to travel up a long grade. The first thing to do is to get that train started and the more we can accelerate the pace of that train, the more certain it is that it is going to get over the top. We have got the train started and it is running, let us say, twenty miles an hour. We must get that train to go forty miles an hour and then there is an assurance that it will go over the top.

All of this Community Chest work, all of this uniting in the cause of meeting human needs, is based on that old word “cooperation”...

...The point I wish to make is that there are a great many people in this country who are going to say, “Oh, I have given, I am helping through such and such an organization, through such and such an individual. Leave me out.” There is no such thing as being left out. They can’t be left out. They have to join you. Because, unfortunately, we know the frailty of a certain type of human nature that says something like that as an excuse for not doing his or her part.

The Government cannot get along without you. The Federal, State and Local Governments can’t. The whole period we are going through will come back in the end to individual citizens, to individual responsibility, to private organization, through the years to come. We are going to have unemployed throughout the United States and we know it. I hope, though, the time is going to come when Government will not have to give relief. I hope the time is going to come soon, when everybody who normally wants a permanent job is going to get it. And so I like to think of Government relief of all kinds as emergency relief.

Your work has a two-fold purpose. You are meeting the emergency and at the same time you are building for the future. Community Chests are going to keep on just as long as any of us are alive -- and a mighty good thing they are too.

I tell you very simply that you have a great responsibility on your shoulders and I know that you are going to fulfill it. You are going back to your States and your communities and give them this message from me: this work is an essential part of the Government’s program, the program of the people of the United States to bring us back to where this country has a right to be. So, go to it, and make a record not only of money but a record of service of which we shall all be very proud.

Text courtesy of the New Deal Network.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/presidents/32_f_roosevelt/psources/ps_extemporaneous.html

Handout 2Print Handout 2

Ronald Reagan on Government and Solving National Problems

“The alarming rate of inflation and the rising toll of unemployment all stem from a single source: the belief that government, particularly the Federal Government, has the answer to our ills, and that the proper method of dealing with social problems is to transfer power from the private to the public sector, and within the public sector from state and local governments to the ultimate power center in Washington. This collectivist, centralizing approach, whatever name or party label it wears, has created our economic problems.” (Ronald Reagan)

http://www.stapleshighschool.org/home.aspx

Inaugural Address

January 20, 1981

...The business of our nation goes forward. These United States are confronted with an economic affliction of great proportions. We suffer from the longest and one of the worst sustained inflations in our national history. It distorts our economic decisions, penalizes thrift and crushes the struggling young and the fixed-income elderly alike. It threatens to shatter the lives of millions of our people.

Idle industries have cast workers into unemployment, human misery and personal indignity. Those who do work are denied a fair return for their labor by a tax system which penalizes successful achievement and keeps us from maintaining full productivity.

But great as our tax burden is, it has not kept pace with public spending. For decades we have piled deficit upon deficit, mortgaging our future and our children’s future for the temporary convenience of the present. To continue this long trend is to guarantee tremendous social, cultural, political and economic upheavals...

...In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we’ve been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden. The solutions we seek must be equitable, with no one group singled out to pay a higher price.

We hear much of special interest groups. Well, our concern must be for a special interest group that has been too long neglected. It knows no sectional boundaries or ethnic and racial divisions, and it crosses political party lines. It is made up of men and women who raise our food, patrol our streets, man our mines and factories, teach our children, keep our homes, and heal us when we’re sick -- professionals, industrialists, shopkeepers, clerks, cabbies and truck drivers. They are, in short, “We the people,” this breed called Americans...

...So, as we begin, let us take inventory. We are a nation that has a government -- not the other way around. And this makes us special among the nations of the Earth. Our government has no power except that granted it by the people. It is time to check and reverse the growth of government, which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed.

It is my intention to curb the size and influence of the Federal establishment and to demand recognition of the distinction between the powers granted to the Federal Government and those reserved to the States or to the people. All of us need to be reminded that the Federal Government did not create the States; the States created the Federal Government.

Now, so there will be no misunderstanding, it’s not my intention to do away with government. It is rather to make it work -- work with us, not over us; to stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it...

...It is no coincidence that our present troubles parallel and are proportionate to the intervention and intrusion in our lives that result from unnecessary and excessive growth of government...

...We have every right to dream heroic dreams. Those who say that we’re in a time when there are not heroes, they just don’t know where to look. You can see heroes every day going in and out of factory gates. Others, a handful in number, produce enough food to feed all of us and then the world beyond. You meet heroes across a counter, and they’re on both sides of that counter. There are entrepreneurs with faith in themselves and faith in an idea, who create new jobs, new wealth and opportunity. They’re individuals and families whose taxes support the government and whose voluntary gifts support church, charity, culture, art and education. Their patriotism is quiet, but deep. Their values sustain our national life...

...In the days ahead I will propose removing the roadblocks that have slowed our economy and reduced productivity. Steps will be taken aimed at restoring the balance between the various levels of government. Progress may be slow, measured in inches and feet, not miles, but we will progress. It is time to reawaken this industrial giant, to get government back within its means, and to lighten our punitive tax burden. And these will be our first priorities, and on these principles there will be no compromise...

http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/publicpapers.html

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