Honors History Blog #2

Dear President Obama,

A great man named Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the President of the United States of America during the Great Depression, and he had to go through the same process as you in getting out of a recession. I think you need to look at what he did during that time and try to use his influence to get out of our current recession. He presented a lot of legislation to Congress to boost the economy and bring much needed relief to the poverty ridden.

He first started by creating the Brain Trust. During this he listened to a lot of non-government people like lawyers and college professors to help him make decisions on economic problems. This would help him see different viewpoints than this own and come up with better ideas to stimulate our crumbling economy.

After that Franklin did his Fireside talks. FDR would do radio speeches to explain to the public exactly what was going on and what the government was doing to help. I think with new technological advances you could be doing this a lot more often through television, Facebook, and Twitter.

After all of this was the New Deal. The New Deal is by far one of the greatest government ideas in history. It created 5 new programs to help stimulate the economy. These were the Rural Electrification Administration (REA), Federal Deposit Insurance Cooperation (FDIC), the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA), the Works Progress Administration (WPA), and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). Overall all of these programs would end up making the government give out a lot of money to improve the condition of our great country and in turn re-stimulate our economy and make our citizens happier.

Fixing this problem will not be an easy road for you, or any citizens. However we need to invest a lot of money into fixing our country in order to gain the money back. Unfortunately the longest you could be in office is 8 years, so we as citizens need to make sure the next president will continue some of the great work you will hopefully do. All I am asking is that instead of masking the whole problem for your term, you go for the long term fix. Even if you look bad now for spending money, I guarantee that in the long run we will all thank you.

- Neil Baffert

Coll, Steve. "The Test : The New Yorker." National and World News, Profiles, Culture, Reviews, Fiction, Poetry : The New Yorker. Web. 10 Dec. 2010. .

Parker, George. "Obama, the Economic Crisis, and the Democrats : The New Yorker." National and World News, Profiles, Culture, Reviews, Fiction, Poetry : The New Yorker. Web. 10 Dec. 2010. .