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Nelson Lichtenstein, American Labor, Congress, and the Welfare State, 1935–2010, Journal of American History, Volume 99, Issue 1, June 2012, Pages 341–342, https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jas056
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Extract
This book is written in the shadow of President Barack Obama’s bruising encounter with his Republican foes in Congress. Tracy Roof, a political scientist, uses an illuminating array of tables, graphs, and other tools of her trade to explore how, over three quarters of a century, congressional conservatives have deployed a diabolically clever set of legislative techniques to thwart or distort liberal efforts to expand the welfare state and advance labor’s institutional power.
The peculiarly American division of governmental power has ensured that the effort to pass anything significant requires that proponents wend their way through a series of legislative choke points even before they try to secure a supermajority in the Senate. Recounting the policy history of key pieces of welfare state legislation, from the late New Deal to Obama’s battle for national health insurance, Roof demonstrates that even when unions were most powerful—in the middle decades of the twentieth century—organized labor found its agenda defeated or distorted, first by the potent alliance of southern Democrats and northern Republicans and then by Dixiecrat control of key congressional committees.
