882 ★ CHAPTER 22 Fighting for the Four Freedoms: World War II
employment were the board’s watchwords. It called for a “new bill of rights”
that would include all Americans in an expanded Social Security system and
guarantee access to education, health care, adequate housing, and jobs for
able-bodied adults. The NRPB’s plan for a “full-employment economy” with a
“fair distribution of income,” said The Nation, embodied “the way of life of free
men.”
The reports continued a shift in liberals’ outlook that dated from the late
1930s. Rather than seeking to reform the institutions of capitalism, liberals
would henceforth rely on government spending to secure full employment,
social welfare, and mass consumption, while leaving the operation of the
economy in private hands. The reports appeared to reflect the views of British
economist John Maynard Keynes, who, as noted in the previous chapter, had
identified government spending as the best way to promote economic growth,
even if it caused budget deficits. The war had, in effect, ended the Depression
by implementing a military version of Keynesianism. In calling for massive
spending on job creation and public works—urban redevelopment, rural elec-
trification, an overhaul of the transportation system, and the like—the NRPB
proposed the continuation of Keynesian spending in peacetime. But this went
so far beyond what Congress was willing to support that it eliminated the
NRPB’s funding.
An Economic Bill of Rights
Mindful that public-opinion polls showed a large majority of Americans favor-
ing a guarantee of employment for those who could not find work, the presi-
dent in 1944 called for an “Economic Bill of Rights.” The original Bill of Rights
restricted the power of government in the name of liberty. FDR proposed to
expand its power in order to secure full employment, an adequate income,
medical care, education, and a decent home for all Americans.
Already ill and preoccupied with the war, Roosevelt spoke only occasion-
ally of the Economic Bill of Rights during the 1944 presidential campaign.
The replacement of Vice President Henry Wallace by Harry S. Truman, then a
little-known senator from Missouri, suggested that the president did not intend
to do battle with Congress over social policy. Congress did not enact the Eco-
nomic Bill of Rights. But in 1944, it extended to the millions of returning veter-
ans an array of benefits, including unemployment pay, scholarships for further
education, low-cost mortgage loans, pensions, and job training. The Service-
men’s Readjustment Act, or GI Bill of Rights, was one of the most far-reaching
pieces of social legislation in American history. Aimed at rewarding members
of the armed forces for their service and preventing the widespread unemploy-
ment and economic disruption that had followed World War I, it profoundly