No Deal (If New Deal)

FDR was way too conservative:

The more important failure of the New Deal, however, was what it did not do. The only way to break the deadlock that paralyzed the U.S. economy in the 1930s was to enormously expand economic activity--quickly and decisively. Instead, the New Deal wavered and equivocated--spending large sums of money with one hand while reducing spending with the other. One of the first acts Congress passed for Roosevelt in 1933 was the Economy Act, which slashed government spending in ways that reduced economic activity. It cut the salaries (and, in some cases, the jobs) of government employees and dramatically reduced payments to World War I veterans, taking $500 million from the economy in a single stroke. The Social Security system, so valuable over the long term, was in the short term a drag on the economy. It began collecting taxes in 1936 but paid out few benefits until the 1940s. In 1937, deluded by a weak economic recovery, Roosevelt (urged on by his Treasury secretary) set out to balance the budget through severe spending cuts. The result was a sudden and dramatic economic downturn--a recession within the Depression that produced some of the highest levels of unemployment and lowest levels of production of the decade.

No Deal