Robert A. Taft: “The Sound Basis for Federal Aid to Education”

Although Robert A. Taft’s career as a Republican senator from Ohio spanned only fourteen years, it was an era of eventful change for the American nation. By the time Taft was sworn in for his first term in January 1939, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s efforts to resolve the Great Depression had created an enormous welfare state, forever altering the relationships between individuals and the government and between the states and the national government. Breaking out only two years later, World War II proved to be an event that transformed the United States into an international superpower. Raising, equipping, and financing the armed forces to fight the global war accelerated still further the great expansion of the national government. Throughout the 1940s, Taft was one of the most important critics of these expansionist developments, engaging in a largely rear-guard struggle in defense of limited government and personal responsibility. In 1947 Taft delivered an address, “The Sound Basis for Federal Aid to Education,” to the American Association of School Administrators in which he seemed to step away from his long-held views to explain why he was sponsoring a bill to provide states with limited federal tax dollars for their public school systems. As he makes clear in this address, an educated citizenry is essential to maintaining individual liberty and equal justice under law.