January 5, 1949 – United States President Harry S. Truman unveils his Fair Deal program, which included: Major improvements in unemployment compensation; Raising the minimum wage to 75¢ an hour, and extending who was covered; Increasing and extending Social Security benefits, and creating a Universal Healthcare system; Measures to ease the U.S. out of a wartime economy into peacetime; Transitional jobs for demobilized military personnel, and increased aid for war veterans returning to civilian life; Increased aid to farmers and small businesses; Enactment of comprehensive housing legislation; Overhauling the federal tax code; Expansion of public works; Revising the pay scale upward for federal employees.

Many of his proposals were never enacted by the increasingly conservative Congress of the late 1940s and early 1950s.