Randa Abdelfattah and Ramteen Arablui

He was, over time, seen by the wealthy as a kind of traitor to his class.

Even though this tax crusade against the wealthy was resonating with people, FDR was feeling uncertain about his reelection.

And he began asking Elmer to investigate more and more people who could be fairly described as his political opponents.

Among them were a Democratic senator from Louisiana named Huey Long, who was a threat to him in the primaries, a Republican congressman from Roosevelt's home district, Hamilton Fish, and Mo Annenberg, owner of a media company that was vocally critical of FDR and the New Deal.

Paul Camacho says it's unclear how much these investigations were politically motivated because some of them were suspected of actual criminal wrongdoing.

But Lawrence Reed cites this as counter-evidence.

Elliot Roosevelt, the son of the president, wrote a very revealing book about the family's years in the White House.

And he points out in that book, quote, my father may have been the originator of the concept of employing the IRS as a weapon of political retribution.

Roosevelt won re-election in 1936, and he would go on to win re-election an unprecedented two more times.

By the late 1930s, talk of war began to fill the airwaves, and fascism was taking hold of Europe.

Some Americans angry at Roosevelt began to call him the New Deal dictator.

He proposed a 99% top income tax rate.

That was extreme and didn't actually get approved by Congress.

But for the business class, this tax crusade and the New Deal were a direct threat to their bottom line.

And more than that, a threat to American innovation and entrepreneurship.

They're saying we're not going to take all the risk and have almost all the reward taken by the government.

and whether you saw it as a good or a bad thing.

This is a radical transformation of the federal government.

Exactly how much New Deal programs actually fix the economy is hard to measure.

Unemployment rates were still high and businesses still struggling by the time World War II began.