To the Editor:

Consider how different our country would be if every program the Republicans have opposed had never come to pass.

There would be no Woodrow Wilson’s 1916 National Parks Agency or the 1920 Women’s Right to Vote. There would have been no 1940’s FDR New Deal to pull us through the Depression or his establishment of Social Security, Unemployment Benefits, the National Minimum Wage, FDIC bank protection or GI Bill of Rights. There would be no LBJ’s Medicare, Clean Waters Restoration Act, National Endowment of the Arts or the Civil Rights Act. Millions wouldn’t have health insurance without Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act. There would be no St. Lawrence Seaway (which FDR first supported in 1941, then was blocked by a Republican Senate, but finally passed under Harry Truman in 1951).

Just as with the present Build Back Better Act, every time a Democrat-sponsored program is introduced, Republicans claim the country will go bankrupt, there’ll be runaway inflation and society will collapse as we know it. But none of that exaggerated fear-mongering ever seems to happen? Things would be very different right now if we’d had a century of only the Republican principle of every man for himself and their platform of unfettered capitalism, war chest funding and no federal programs.

It’s easy to grumble about Democrats while taking for granted the many ways their policies have strengthened our nation and supported its people. But I think the real question is: Would people vote for the Grand Old Party (GOP) if they were told that they could no longer benefit from those so-called “socialist” Democrat programs that their politicians love to hate? (It doesn’t matter what women think, of course, because they wouldn’t have the right to vote.)

Martha Hodges
Massena