Postwar

For Monday: Johnson, ch. 6.

Suggestions open for next assignment!

US bombs Hiroshima 8/6/45.  And 85% of Americans approve

Truman's ratings soon start to fall:

• Inflation
• Labor unrest
• Housing shortages
• The Iron Curtain

The Employment Act of 1946 commits the federal government to promoting maximum employment, production, and purchasing power, set up the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) and the Joint Economic Committee.

1946:  GOP takes Congress for the first time in 16 years.  The "Conservative Coalition" runs Congress.

Bipartisan accomplishments:  Marshall Plan and the National Security Act of 1947. But....

Labor

In May 1947  Over Truman's veto, Congress passes the Taft-Hartley Act  (Johnson 165-166)

• Bans "closed shops," where employers must hire only labor union members. Allows union shops, requiring new hires to join the union within a certain amount of time.
• Lets states pass "right-to-work" laws banning  union shops.
  
• Imposed on unions the same obligation to bargain in good faith that the Wagner Act placed on employers. 
• Bans secondary boycotts, forbidding a union that has a conflict with one employer to pressure a neutral employer to stop doing business sith the first employer.
• Authorized the president to seek a court order for an 80-day cooling-off period for companies and unions to resolve their differences.
• Bans unions from using their general treasury funds for federal political campaigns, but does not prevent them from forming political action committees (PACs) as a legal workaround.  The existing CIO PAC would be a template for future political activity.

Truman's Comeback and the Rowe/ Clifford Memo

• Dewey, Henry Wallace (no relation to George Wallace):  need to energize progressives (sound familiar?)
• The Great Migration and the Black vote -- which is very much in play. Concern that the GOP will outflank the Dems -- BUT congressional GOP did not align with Dewey.
• Jewish voters -- What happened in 1948? (Note that Palestinians would take exception to Truman's acccount.)
• Anticommunism and white ethnics.

Civil Rights

• "To Secure These Rights"
• Desegregating the armed forces

Truman wins in 1948 (start video around 16:30)

Housing (Johnson 166-167)

Health Care (Johnson 169-170):  

• Hill-Burton Act of 1946:  hospital construction -- but segregation and lack of funding limit scope.
• In 1949, Truman proposes universal health insurance with funding coming from a payroll tax.  AMA carries weight in defeating it.

Consider who is in Congress in the late 1940s and early 1950s:  JFK, LBJ, Nixon, and Ford.