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==Senator==
Taft was elected to the first of his three terms as U.S. Senator in the Republican landslide of [[1938]]. The expansion of the New Deal had been stopped and Taft saw his mission to roll it back, bringing efficiency to government and letting business restore the economy. The New Deal was "socialistic" he proclaimed, as he attacked deficit spending, high farm subsidies, governmental bureaucracy, and the National Labor Relations Board. He did support social security and public housing, while attacking federal health insurance. Taft orchestrated the [[Conservative Coalition]], which had effective control of Congress from 1939 to the early 1960s. Taft set forth a conservative program oriented toward economic growth, individual economic opportunity, adequate social welfare, strong national defense, and non-involvement in European wars.
Taft was re-elected again in 1944 and in 1950, after high-profile contests battling the labor unions in an industrial state. He was Senate Majority Leader after the GOP swept the elections of 1946, though he left foreign policy to his colleague Sen. [[Arthur Vandenberg]].
Moving a bit to the left in the late 1940s, he supported federal aid to education (which did not pass). He cosponsored the Taft-Wagner-Ellender Housing Act to subsidize public housing in inner cities. Government, he argued in 1946, should "give to all a minimum standard of living," including sufficient education to give "to all children a fair opportunity to get a start in life."<ref>Taft, ''Papers'' 3:111</ref>
==Labor issues==
The [[Taft-Hartley Act]] single-handedly ended a growing problem of strikes after [[World War II]], and preserved [[capitalism]] in the United States. Ever since, [[Democrats]] have sought unsuccessfully for its repeal. It bans "unfair" union practices, outlaws [[closed shops]], and authorizes the President to seek federal court injunctions to impose an eighty-day cooling-off period if a strike threatened the national interest.
