President Biden is clearly in a Franklin D. Roosevelt frame of mind. Summing up his policy vision in an address to a joint session of Congress last week, he referenced FDR’s Depression-era motto “We do our part.”
Yet many of us who study Roosevelt’s New Deal cringed at Biden’s reference. This phrase accompanied the Blue Eagle, an emblem created to increase compliance with the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933. Economists rarely agree on much, but we are nearly unanimous in acknowledging that NIRA was a harmful policy. By using this phrase to justify his own agenda, President Biden should hope he is not repeating FDR’s policy mistakes.