Katie Wagner
Moira Clark
AP United States History
25 March 2013
The New Deal and the Great Society Although the New Deal was established about thirty years before the Great Society was, they both embodied similar characteristics. The origins of these two parts of history clearly resemble each other. Also, the goals of the Great Society largely compare to those of the New Deal. Finally, the New Deal and the Great Society prove to be alike through their lasting legacies. The Great Society resembles the New Deal in its origins, goals, and social and political legacies. The origins of the Great Society reflects that of the New Deal in various ways. One common origin of these two programs is their basis in Progressive ideas. Although
The New Deal and the Great Society share the social legacy of making civil rights an important issue in America. During the New Deal, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 was passed, which recognized a minimum wage, a forty-hour work week, and abolished child labor (Lawson 44). The Higher Education Act of 1965 (HEA) not only gave funding for scholarships, student loans, libraries, and a teacher corps, but also allowed the government to stop funding segregated schools (“Domestic Policy” 5). Both of these policies provided much needed aid in the civil rights effort that was going on in its time. The expansion of the powers of the government is an obvious political legacy of both the New Deal and the Great Society. The Administration Reorganization Act of the New Deal expanded the powers of the executive branch giving the president authority over various government agencies (Lawson 44). The Great Society expanded the government’s responsibility over healthcare through the Medicare program, which gave the elderly health insurance that was funded by Social Security taxes, which were established during the New Deal, as well as the Medicaid program, which provided health insurance for poor people under the age of sixty-five (Johnson 234). All of these programs enabled the government to make controversial extensions of its powers. The New Deal and the Great Society can relate to each other in