FDR Coined The Phrase 'Not For The Needy But For The Greedy' - And It Backfired On Him In The Most Spectacular Way Possible

 

 

If you spend any time among the left – and I've spent far too much – you are aware that so much of their 'political ideology' can be summed up in catchphrases. One of them which has been said so often by politicians such as Bernie and AOC about how the government works is some variation on "it works not for the needy but for the greedy.' It doesn't come up as often as 'the rich paying their share' or 'taxing the top one percent', but it takes the form of a meme just as often.

I won't deny the phrase is catchy. The thing is it Bernie or the Squad or Elizabeth Warren didn't create it. There's a good chance Sanders or Warren know its true origin and co-opted it for themselves because it fits in with their philosophy and more importantly it comes from the only President they likely have any respect for in history: FDR.

This is like every other slogan that comes from recent political history (Trump stole Make America Great Again from Reagan and Clinton; to use the most obvious recent example) and just as often it has been taken completely out of context. The biggest problem with that particular phrase is that within weeks of his using it came back to bite FDR in a way few things he did in his career ever did and it very well could have undone his entire Presidency had it not been for other circumstances. So let's talk about the origin of the famous leftist slogan and why it was never popular the moment it was used.

Context as always matters. This happened in February of 1944. It's now a matter of public record that at this point FDR had been diagnosed with congestive heart failure and had more or less begun the decline that would lead to him passing away a little more than a year later. As part of this there was an effort to lighten the President's workload even though most agreed it was impossible. In the midst of the period leading up to the Normandy landings, the President was meeting with military strategists less than once a week.  He conferred with his Secretary of War Henry Stimson personally (as opposed to Cabinet meetings) just three times in February and March. By contrast Churchill was in constant contact with his military chiefs.

If anything he was less involved with his domestic policy, openly not telling his closest members his plans for legislation. At the start of February Jim Byrnes  'the assistant President' had threatened to resigned because he hadn't been told about his plans for 'an economic bill of rights' which ended up being the GI Bill. FDR made it clear that he thought Byrnes was a prima donna and laughed at the fact that one of his top cabinet officials had hurt feelings about a huge policy shift.

This was keeping very much with the kind of person FDR was. He'd long considered himself an indispensable man and while he was great at playing practical politics he thought he was the only one qualified to be President. He'd considered running for a third term as early as 1937 and while circumstances very well did dictate his needed to run again in 1940 that he spent no time in the years in-between training a political successor spoke to his own belief that he was the only person who was qualified to be President. Not just among the Democrats but period.

FDR had always felt that because of his massive electoral wins the American people had put him above having to answer the demands of most people, including those in Congress. And after twelve years of being in power many of the men in both houses were beginning to get tired of 'That Man' who made it very clear that he was going to do what he wanted and that Congress had to lump it. Few people felt this more clearly then Senate Majority Leader Alben Barkley.

Barkley ranks as one of the great political figures of the 20^th century. He had represented Kentucky in Congress since 1913 when he had come into power in the landslide that made Woodrow Wilson, FDR's first political employer President. Initially conservative working with Wilson helped make him more liberal from the creation of the Federal Reserve and the FTC to the doomed attempt to get America to enter the League of Nations. He ran for the Senate for the first time in 1926 and won reelection in FDR's landslide.

He had a reputation for party unity and for being an incredible speaker both on the stump and at conventions. As early as 1928 there had been a boom to make him the Democratic nominee for Vice President and he was kept in consideration every four years afterwards. He was given the Keynote address at the Democratic convention of 1932 and would get one at every convention until 1948.

When the Democrats took control of the Senate in landslide numbers majority leader Joseph Robinson appointed Barkley as his assistant and the two worked to get most of FDR's New Deal programs through Congress. Barkley had said in his keynote speech of 1936 that the Supreme Court was taking advantage of the country. This led him to be FDR's choice when Robinson died of a heart attack.

When FDR chose to ignore separation of powers by making it clear he favored Barkley for majority leader many senators resented his influence and though Barkley won – albeit by a single vote – from the start of his tenure he was considered a Roosevelt lapdog. When the administration began to struggle he was dubbed by the press as 'bumbling Barkley' even though among his accomplishment was the creation of the Hatch Act.

Barkley thought Wilson was the greatest President he served under while he thought Roosevelt 'had the instinct of a virtuoso for playing practical politics and a deep and penetrating insight into how government worked." But by 1943 tensions were developing between the two. And in February of 1944 they came to a head.

In February FDR had requested that Congress approve tax increases to generate $10 billion in revenue for the war. All Barkley and the Senate finance committee could get was $2.3 billion. Roosevelt told Barkley that he planned to veto it because the Treasury and Office of Economic Stabilization recommended  it.

If FDR had just done that he might have avoided problems. However in his veto message he included the phrase: "It is not a tax bill but a tax relief bill providing relief not for the needy but for the greedy." That was too much for Barkley to bear. On February 23^rd Barkley entered the Senate chamber and made it clear that he planned to take the unprecedented step of resigning as Majority Leader. He said that Roosevelt phrasing: "was a calculated and deliberate assault upon the legislative integrity of every member of the Congress of the United States." He urged his colleagues to override the veto.

Today's readers might greet this with neutrality comparing it to the vote to unseat Kevin McCarthy two years earlier as well as the decision of so many elected officials to not seek re-election. This was something different: Barkley was going to stay in the Senate – he in fact was running for reelection that year – but was declaring his independence from the President on this issue. And everyone in the Senate knew it.

When FDR heard this from Vice President Wallace he immediately sent a letter to Barkley apologizing and urging him not to resign. But the next morning he not only did just that but he was unanimously reelected as majority leader.  And more importantly Congress chose to do exactly that in a huge way: the House would override the veto by 204 votes and the Senate by a margin of 3 to 1 and while the Republicans had made sizable gains in the 1942 elections in both houses (privately the country was no longer accepting the Roosevelt mandate) Democrats still had the majority in both chambers.  The veto of the tax bill had shown just how little goodwill FDR had left in Congress and it wasn't just coming from the Republicans any more.

It's rare for a sitting President to receive this substantial a repudiation from Congress in American history and there were few examples of this at the time: the censure of Andrew Jackson, the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, the failure of the League of Nations. But even for some Democrats this was astonishing. As Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia would explain it to a British ally had that happened across the pond, the government would have been swept away.  FDR's reaction was simple: while he chose to publicly patch things up with Barkley, he removed him from his list as potential vice presidential running mates for the upcoming election. (Harry Truman, it should be noted, sided with Barkley on the override.)

Had this unfolded still further any chance FDR had for reelection the coming November – perhaps even his renomination as President – might have been completely undone. Much of the reason it didn't had more to do with Barkley's goodwill then his commander-in-chief.

Barkley was very much a party man and he knew that FDR was commander-in-chief in the middle of a war. Despite Barkley's feelings many Democrats still thought that the sitting President was the only one who had a chance of reelection in the fall. More to the point Barkley was hoping to improve his political prospects (he himself thought he had a chance of being nominated for Vice President at the convention anyway) and it wouldn't be until Truman was chosen that he realized that this boost to his prestige did more to keep him from becoming President.  But he was very much still a loyal Democrat and he was facing a reelection campaign himself that year. Roosevelt did nothing to challenge him in his Democratic primary that year and he won reelection for his fourth term in the Senate.

Eventually Truman would named Barkley his running mate in 1948 and he would become Vice President that year. But by that point Barkley was 70 years old and had effectively aged out of becoming a serious Presidential contender. While he made a valid case at the 1952 Democratic convention the delegates chose Adlai Stevenson instead. He would run for the Senate again and win election in 1954 but die little more than a year after taking office, at the age of 78.

It's worth noting while all of this was going on FDR basically was on vacation at Hyde Park. He seemed not to have truly cared about Barkley's actions while they were happening. FDR knew this could have effected the election and cause him to choose not to run and he would send a memo asking if there was any practical alternative for a fourth term. By this point FDR was becoming impatient with the slow process of how government worked and wanted to act but simultaneously wanting to make decisions at his own pace. One sees a commander-in-chief who is frustrated with how the government works but doesn't want to relinquish power unless he's forced too. And regardless of his health FDR was still sure he was the only man who could lead America at any time.

Context truly matters and its clear that FDR's decision to make Congress's decision something that would today be considered 'playing to his base' had consequences that under other circumstances could have cost him the election.  That the phrase he coined lives on in left-wing politics to this day not only shows the left's choosing slogans rather than policy but their ignorance of history. Had FDR lived he might have well written in his memoirs that he wished he had been more circumspect with this phrase. Then again, given the way so many of his followers are willing to gloss over the imperfections and mistakes in so much of his policy, both foreign and domestic, they'd just push it aside. "Barkley was just another Senator from Kentucky," they'd say. "What could any of them possibly know  what was best for America especially compared to that Man?"