CLEP US History II

Answer: E - Franklin D. Roosevelt was not responsible for the Interstate Highway System, which was started in 1956 under President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) put American laborers to work on public works projects, helping citizens climb out of the Depression by laboring on jobs that benefitted the country. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) addressed energy and efficiency issues in the South, which was severely lagging behind the rest of the nation due to the failure of Reconstruction. The TVA built dams, which helped generate electricity and modernize rural Southern farms. Many of FDR’s New Deal activities found opposition in the Supreme Court, so in 1937, he proposed the Judiciary Reorganization Bill, which would have allowed him to appoint a new Supreme Court Justice for every sitting Justice who did not retire within the six months following his 70th birthday. The bill was called the “court-packing plan,” since it was generally considered to be Roosevelt’s attempt to “pack” the Court with Justices who would affirm his policies. The plan failed due to a confluence of factors, but it was not popular with either the people or other bodies of the government. The Manhattan Project was created in 1942 in an effort to create an atomic bomb. Though the project was spurred by concerns that Adolf Hitler would develop an atomic bomb for use in World War II, the Third Reich fell before they could achieve the feat. After the United States succeeded in creating the bomb, they used it against Japan instead.