Franklin D. Roosevelt vs William E. Borah

Keep the 1936 conservation-payment program, favor production 'of all the market will absorb' plus a reserve, judicious commodity loans on seasonal surpluses, and federal assistance to balance production with demand.

Enforce the criminal and civil provisions of the existing antitrust laws and, where corporate devices or judicial construction have weakened them, legislate to restore their effectiveness against monopolistic practices.

Break the 'monopoly ridden, price-fixing system' that gives 'a scanty meagre living for the vast majority and almost Incalculable wealth for the few'; wrest the party from the utilities, the du Ponts and the eastern organization that defend it.

Bring under the civil service law all continuing positions exempted during the emergency.

Keep the Wagner Act's guarantee of self-organization free from employer interference and the federal machinery for settling disputes; resist the 'labor spy' tactics of the pay-envelope campaign.

Seek legislation within the Constitution; if problems like wages, hours and child labor cannot be solved that way, seek a clarifying amendment giving Congress and the States the needed power. The candidate never said how he would deal with the Court's adverse decisions.

Enact crop insurance so surpluses of good years carry farmers and consumers through drought years.

Maintain the managed dollar of 1934 ('the soundest currency in the world') and stabilize it to prevent the former swings that injured debtors and creditors in turn.

Use the organized power of government to give the average citizen 'equal opportunity in the market place' against concentrated control of other people's money, property and labor.

A posture, not a program: the forces of 'business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking' will be mastered in the second administration.

Federal cooperation in refinancing farm indebtedness at the lowest possible interest over long terms, and a program to reduce tenancy.

As national income rises from $38 billion (1932) toward $60 billion, receipts will cover ordinary and relief expenses 'within a year or two' without additional taxes; then reduce the debt.

Justify the net debt increase as the price of averting starvation and concentration of property, offset by six billion in new assets; the debt will be paid out of rising national income, not oppressive taxation.

Let expenditures fall with unemployment so an increasing share is met from current revenues.

Aid those visited by drought and floods; conserve water 'from its source to the sea'; a national flood-control policy.

Steadily extend the government's housing program for people of meagre incomes while encouraging private home construction; 'the wiping out of slums.'

Widely understood -- from James Roosevelt's remarks and the President's Detroit statement that he was not through experimenting -- to intend renewed federal control of wages, hours and trade practices; the President answered Landon's question with 'you pay your money and you take your choice.'

Continue to seek federal action to reduce over-long hours, raise starvation wages, end child labor and wipe out sweatshops; the platform promises to seek this 'within the Constitution' and by clarifying amendment if necessary.

Continue the non-intervention convention, the abandoned Platt Amendment and withdrawn marines; seek an inter-American peace machinery at Buenos Aires in December 1936.

Reject federal anti-lynching legislation on States'-rights grounds and denounce the leaders promising it to colored voters as 'hypocritical and Intellectually dishonest.'

Continue the cheap-money policy, FHA/HOLC home financing and the reformed banking system.

Observe neutrality in others' disputes, use the neutrality legislation to cut war profits, avoid League political commitments, and resist the clamor for war trade if war comes abroad.

Keep and extend the 1935 Act: old-age insurance, unemployment insurance, aid to the crippled, blind and mothers, with benefits rising as national capacity grows.

Continue TVA-style rate yardsticks and the Rural Electrification Administration's loans to bring cheap power to homes and farms.

Reject the 'red herring': neither seek nor accept support from advocates of Communism or any alien 'ism'; meet radicalism by curing the conditions that breed it.

Keep making executive trade agreements under the 1934 Act while protecting farmers and manufacturers against dumping and subsidized goods.

Claim credit for recovery and keep the policy of tackling 'the problems of those who were at the bottom of the economic pyramid.'

Keep the contributory old-age insurance and the employer-financed unemployment insurance as enacted; reject the 'pay-envelope' claim that workers bear the whole cost or that reserves will be diverted.

Keep the 1936 surtax on retained corporate earnings as an extension of the individual income tax, while correcting defects in application.

Keep the 1935-36 structure: earned-income credit, lower rates for small corporations, higher surtaxes over $50,000 and $1 million, higher estate taxes; reduce hidden consumption taxes.

Continue WPA-style work relief in cooperation with State and local governments where private industry fails to supply jobs; refuse to 'purge the rolls by starvation.'

Continue existing veterans' benefits (the bonus having been paid in 1936 over the President's veto).

Continue the NYA and CCC programs that keep youth in school and give constructive occupation.