(单词翻译:单击)
听力文本
Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION – American history in VOA Special English. Franklin Roosevelt's first three months as president was one of the most exciting periods in American politics. Roosevelt entered the White House in March nineteen thirty-three. The nation was in crisis. Banks across the country had closed their doors. The Great Economic Depression was at its lowest point. Roosevelt and the Congress moved quickly to help people with little food or money. They launched a series of major economic programs. I'm Doug Johnson with Mario Ritter. This week in our series, we talk about the laws and policies of President Franklin Roosevelt including those known as the "Second New Deal."
Conditions improved within a year after Roosevelt took office. There was no question about that. Banks were open. More people had jobs. Farmers were doing better. And poor people were not so close to disaster as before. However, conditions were far from perfect. Ten million workers still did not have jobs. Young people leaving school were lucky to find any job at all. And most business owners were only earning small profits, if any at all. After the worst crisis was past, some groups of Americans began to attack Roosevelt and his programs. Conservatives were the first to break with the president. They accused Roosevelt of socialist economic policies. Much more serious to Roosevelt was criticism from reformers within his own party. A number of popular leaders with strong ideas began to attract support from large numbers of Americans. Roosevelt saw his national unity falling apart. Conservatives were accusing him of socialism. Leftist opponents said he was doing too little to end the depression. He saw that he had to change his path.
Roosevelt knew he had little chance to re-gain the support of conservative Americans. His policies were too progressive. So, halfway through his first term as president, he began to support new reforms in an effort to win more support from the left. The Supreme Court made the president's effort easier. Early in nineteen thirty-five, the court ruled that several of Roosevelt's earlier programs violated the constitution and ordered an end to them. Among them were major programs for farmers and industrial planning. The court's decisions forced Roosevelt to create new programs and try new ideas. One of his first new actions was to support a plan for government controls on companies that supplied water and produced electricity. Another was a measure to give jobs to workers. A third new law forced companies doing business with the federal government to pay workers a minimum wage. And the government also began enforcing a new law to control the actions of stock market traders and investment companies.
At the same time, Roosevelt began to attack large companies. He spoke about the importance of small businesses in a democracy. He warned the nation that large companies had too much power. And he called for new actions to increase business competition and control large companies. Roosevelt supported, and Congress passed, two laws during this period that would change the lives of working Americans for years to come. The first law gave more power to labor unions. The second created a federal system to provide money for workers after they retired. Roosevelt's administration had already supported labor unions in an earlier law. But that law was over-ruled by the Supreme Court. So in nineteen thirty-five, the Congress passed a new law called the National Labor Relations Act. The act created a national labor relations group to help negotiate agreements between workers and business owners. It gave all workers the right to join or form a labor union. And it ordered business owners to negotiate with a union if it represented most of the workers.
The new law, for the first time, gave unions real power and negotiating rights. The other very important law passed during this period created the national social security system. The law forced every worker and business owner to pay a small amount of money each month to the federal government. In exchange, the government paid money to workers who had retired or lost their jobs. The new law did not serve everyone. Farmers, government workers, and a number of other groups were not included in the system. The plan also did nothing to help people who were already unemployed. A person had to have a job after the new system began and then lose it to get money. However, the national social security law established a system that would grow and become a central part of American life. Roosevelt also supported other new laws during this period that changed the American economy. A banking act gave the nation's central bank -- the Federal Reserve Board -- new power to control the total amount of money in use.
Another law increased taxes for rich people. A third law limited the power of major companies to gain control of local electric utility companies. The new laws openly challenged the power of big companies, big banks, and big money. Roosevelt rejected the idea that government should cooperate with major companies. Instead, he accused many of the companies of ruining the economy and hurting the working man. He called on Congress to help small companies and the average American. Perhaps the most important change during this period was that Roosevelt became willing to accept a federal budget that was not balanced. He began to agree with the ideas of Marriner Eccles, the head of the Federal Reserve Bank. Eccles believed that government had a duty to spend extra money during times of economic crisis. The extra money, he said, would create jobs for more people. They could buy more goods. And this would increase economic growth.
Eccles believed that it was good policy for a government to spend more money than it earned through taxes during such periods. He argued that a growing economy would increase wages and bring in more tax money. Roosevelt's administration had spent more money than it earned ever since it took office. But the president and his advisers did so only to end the economic crisis. They believed that it was a necessary evil. But Eccles and others told Roosevelt that it was not bad for the nation if the government spent more than it earned. The British economist John Maynard Keynes published an influential book that supported the same policy. And Roosevelt and his top advisers began to accept the new idea. Roosevelt's economic policies were known as the "New Deal." But the many changes he made during this period became known as the "Second New Deal". They included some of the most important pieces of legislation in the history of the country, such as the National Labor Relations Act and the Social Security law. And Roosevelt's willingness to accept an unbalanced budget would be the first step toward federal budget deficits that would grow steadily in the years to come. Budget deficits would jump under President Lyndon Johnson during the war in Vietnam. They would be an important cause of economic inflation in the United States and the world in the nineteen-seventies. And Americans would elect Ronald Reagan president in nineteen-eighty partly to try to bring federal spending under control. In nineteen-thirty-five, however, most Americans agreed with Franklin Roosevelt that budget deficits were necessary to fight the serious economic depression.
重点解析
1.a series of 一连串；一系列
The students have put forward a series of questions.
学生们提出了一系列问题。
2.be far from 距离某处很远；远不是
That may not be far from the truth.
这种说法可能与事实相去不远。
3.call on 号召；呼吁
I call on everyone to renounce the use of violence and armed struggle.
我呼吁每个人都放弃使用暴力和武装斗争。
4.try to 设法；试图
Don't try to deceive me.
你别诳我。
参考译文
欢迎收听VOA慢速英语之建国史话节目。富兰克林·罗斯福就任总统的最初三个月是美国政坛最激动人心的一段时期。1933年3月，罗斯福入主白宫。美国当时正陷入危机。全国的银行都停止营业，经济大萧条处于最低点。罗斯福和国会迅速采取行动，帮助那些缺少食物和金钱的人们。他们启动了一系列重大的经济计划。我是道格·约翰逊，和我一道主持节目的是马里奥·里特。在本周的系列节目中，我们将讨论富兰克林·罗斯福总统的法律和政策，包括那些被称为“第二新政”的法律和政策。
罗斯福任职后的一年内，情况有所改善，这是毫无疑问的。银行开门营业了。更多的人拥有了工作，农民们过比以前好，穷人也不像以前那样生活穷苦。然而，情况远非完美。一千万工人仍然没有工作。离开学校的年轻人，能找到份工作就算幸运了。大多数企业主只能赚到很少的利润。在最严重的危机过去之后，一些美国人开始攻击罗斯福和他的计划。保守派最先与总统决裂，他们指责罗斯福实行社会主义经济政策。对罗斯福来说，更严重的是党内革新派的批评。一些深受欢迎的领导人，拥有强烈的想法，他们开始吸引大批美国人的支持。罗斯福眼见国家的团结瓦解。保守派指责他搞社会主义，左派反对者说，他在结束大萧条方面做得太少了。他看到自己必须改变道路了。
罗斯福知道他几乎没有机会重新获得保守派美国人的支持。他的政策太超前了，因此，在第一届总统任期过半时，他开始支持新的改革，以争取左翼的更多支持。最高法院简化了总统的工作。早在1935年，法院裁定罗斯福的几个早期计划违反宪法，并下令终止，其中包括有关农民和产业规划的重要计划。法院的判决迫使罗斯福制定新的方案并尝试新的想法，他最初的一项新行动是支持政府对供水和发电公司实施控制的计划。另一项是给工人提供工作的措施。第三项新法律迫使与联邦政府做生意的公司向工人支付最低工资，政府也开始实施一项新的法律来控制股票市场交易者和投资公司的行为。
与此同时，罗斯福开始攻击大型公司。他谈到了小企业在民主国家中的重要性，警告全国，大公司权力过大。他还呼吁采取新的行动，增强商业竞争，控制大公司。罗斯福在这期间支持并通过了两项法律，这两项法律将在未来几年内改变美国工人的生活。第一部法律赋予工会更多的权力，第二部法律建立了一种联邦制度，为退休后的工人提供资金。罗斯福政府在早期的一项法律中已经支持工会，但那项法律被最高法院推翻了。因此，在1935年，国会通过了一项称为《全国劳动关系法》的新法案。该法案成立了一个全国性的劳资关系小组，帮助工人和企业主之间进行协议谈判。它赋予所有工人加入或组成工会的权利。如果工会代表大多数工人，它将命令企业主与工会谈判。
新法律首次赋予工会实权和谈判权。这一时期通过的另一项非常重要的法律，以此建立了国家社会保障制度。该法律迫使每个工人和企业主每月向联邦政府支付少量的钱款。作为交换，政府向退休或失业的工人支付工资。新法律并不为每个人服务。农民、政府工作人员和其他一些群体没有被纳入这一制度。该计划也没有帮助那些已经失业的人。一个人必须在新制度开始实施后拥有一份工作，然后再失业才能拿到钱。然而，国家社会保障法建立了一个体系，该体系将不断发展并成为美国人生活的中心部分。在这一时期，罗斯福还支持其他改变美国经济的新法律。一项银行法赋予了美国中央银行——联邦储备委员会——控制在用货币总量的新权力。
另一项法律增加了富人的税收。第三部法律限制了大公司获得当地电力公司控制权的权力。新法律公开挑战大公司、大银行和大规模资金的权力。罗斯福拒绝了政府应该与大公司合作的想法。相反，他指责许多公司破坏经济，还伤害工人。他呼吁国会向小公司和普通民众提供帮助。这一时期最重要的变化，也许是罗斯福愿意接受不平衡的联邦预算。他开始同意美联储行长马林·埃克尔斯的想法。埃克尔斯认为，在经济危机时期，政府有责任支出更多的钱款。他表示，这些额外的款项将为更多人创造就业机会。他们可以购买更多的商品，并促进经济增长。
埃克尔斯认为，在这样的时期，政府支出的款项要比通过税收获得的多，这是一个好政策。他认为，经济增长会增加工资，带来更多的税收。罗斯福政府自上台后，花费了比以往更多的钱款。但总统和其顾问们这样做，只是为了结束经济危机。他们认为，这是一种必然的罪恶。但是，埃克尔斯和其他人告诉罗斯福，如果政府支出的钱款超过其收入，对国家来说并不是坏事。英国经济学家约翰·梅纳德·凯恩斯出版了一本有影响力的书，支持同样的政策。罗斯福和他的高级顾问们开始接受这个新想法。罗斯福的经济政策被称为“新政”，但他在此期间所做的许多改变则被称为“第二个新政”。其中包括一些美国历史上最重要的立法，如《国家劳动关系法》和《社会保障法》。罗斯福愿意接受一个不平衡的预算，这将是朝着联邦预算赤字迈出的第一步。在未来几年里，联邦预算赤字将稳步增长。在越南战争期间，林登·约翰逊总统的财政赤字将大幅增加。这将是20世纪70年代，美国和其它国家出现经济通货膨胀的一个重要原因。美国人将在1980年选出里根作为总统，部分原因是为了控制联邦开支。然而，在1935年，大多数美国人同意富兰克林·罗斯福的预算赤字是必要的，用以对抗严重的经济萧条。
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