Above: The description for this photograph reads: "WPA Recreation leaders conduct social hour for girls group at Arkansas State Hospital for Nervous Diseases, Little Rick, Arkansas, June 1937." Photo from the National Archives.
Above: The description for this photograph--taken in Savannah, Georgia, 1936--reads: "Blind person using the Braille writer under supervision of WPA teacher." Photo from the National Archives.
The New Deal Ethos Has Been Replaced by the Cruelty, Greed, and Selfishness of the 1%
Trump, MAGA, Republicans, and their wealthy donors have made massive budget cuts to Medicaid in order to facilitate massive tax cuts for themselves (see, e.g., "Republican Megabill’s Tax Cuts for Millionaires Are Financed by Taking Health Insurance From 4.7 Million People," Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, September 3, 2025).
One result we are beginning to see, from this right-wing Medicaid cut, is the degradation of healthcare for the disabled (see, e.g., "Families Defend Disability Services Amid Medicaid Cuts," Kaiser Family Foundation Health News, March 2, 2026).
This degradation of services is a deliberate decision by the 1%, who control public policy, to prioritize their own luxury, health, and lifespan, over the urgent needs of the disabled.
This is the opposite of the New Deal, where the rich were taxed more, a vast array of services were offered to the disabled, and the seeds of Medicaid were planted.
FDR felt strongly that the disabled had to be taken care of and included in the national life. Here are some of his thoughts on the matter:
- "The objective of a national health program is to make available in all parts of our country and for all groups of our people the scientific knowledge and skill at our command to prevent and care for sickness and disability" (source).
- "Figures show that there are well over three hundred thousand crippled children in the United States and probably at least an equal number of grown-up people. It is my belief, and I think the belief of the doctors of the United States, that the great majority of these citizens of ours, more than half a million of them, can be restored to useful citizenship if we can give them the most modern, scientific, medical and educational treatment" (source).
- "[We] believe in and insist on the right of the helpless, the right of the weak, and the right of the crippled everywhere to play their part in life- and survive" (source).
- "Our national concern for the handicapped and the infirm is one of our national characteristics. Indeed, it caused our enemies to laugh at us as soft" (source).
- "A generation ago people had scarcely given thought to the terms 'social security'... It is only within recent years that Government has given its attention in a serious, effective way to... Government assistance to the blind and the handicapped" (source).
- "Early in our history, we realized that the basic wealth of our land is in its healthy, enlightened children, trained to assume the responsibilities and enjoy the privileges of a democracy... If any become handicapped from any cause, we are determined that they shall be properly cared for and guided to full and useful lives. How different it is in the lands of our enemies! In Germany and Japan, those who are handicapped in body or mind are regarded as unnecessary burdens to the state" (source).
Unfortunately, we are now living in a fascist America where the rich get preferential treatment and the disabled, among many other non-wealthy groups, are brushed aside further every day, viewed as economic burdens (which is ironic because Medicaid is a much stronger economic driver than tax cuts for the rich - largely because Medicaid dollars end up circulating throughout the economy, whereas the rich often hoard and sit on their extra after-tax income and wealth).
It would be better--both for our morality and a working-class economy--if we returned to humanity and decency. It would be better if we returned to the New Deal.
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