Return to New Deal?

OPINION:

Former President Bill Clinton’s slogan, “It’s the economy, stupid,” resonates as strongly today as it did when he first said it.

In the 1930s, President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal provided our greatest period of prolonged security, as well as prosperity, for generations.

Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. bank-account protection still helps to safeguard our economy today. In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan created a different economic engine, one that eliminated most of our middle-class jobs.

Reagan’s supply-side trade and economic system uses multinational companies to manufacture overseas to escape U.S.-mandated labor, safety and environmental constraints. Under it, our industrial capacity is essentially dismantled.

Without middle-class revenue, national and personal debt keep growing into the trillions.

Our representatives should start taking direction from the Constitution and our history. “We the People” must not be left out as beneficiaries of our own economy. We should set our own living and trade standards.

Reagan’s institutionalized policy — the basic function of which causes deficits and despair — should be discontinued. Both Roosevelt’s and Reagan’s economic programs had their ups, downs and inflation, but Roosevelt’s has proved much more serviceable than Reagan’s.

LOUIS L. BOEHM

Orchard Park, New York