Fair Deal

The Fair Deal was the term given to an ambitious set of proposals put forward by United States President Harry S. Truman to the United States Congress in his January 1949 State of the Union address. The term, however, has also been used to describe the domestic reform agenda of the Truman Administration, which governed the United States from 1945 to 1953. It marked a new stage in the history of Modern liberalism in the United States, but with the Conservative Coalition dominant in Congress, the major initiatives did not become law unless they had GOP support. As Neustadt concludes, the most important proposals were aid to education, universal health insurance, FEPC and repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act. They were all debated at length, then voted down. Nevertheless, enough smaller and less controversial (but still important) items passed that liberals could claim some success.