The debate about a public health insurance option mirrors the debate
about public power in the 1920’s and 30’s. The arguments then were very
similar to the arguments we hear today.
The principal issue then was whether the federal government should
enter the public power business by investing taxpayers’ money to build
the Tennessee Valley Authority and to harness the Columbia and other
rivers for electrical energy, or whether the sites should be transferred to the
private sector. A second issue was who should build transmission lines
and set wholesale prices when the Federal government built dams.
The answer to the second question was first enunciated on the Senate
floor in the fight over the Wilson Dam in 1920 by Senator John Sharp
Williams of Tennessee. He said, “The government should have somewhere a
producer of these things that should furnish a productive element to
stop and check private profiteering.” Thus was born the yardstick
federal policy which later found its way into TVA legislation through
the efforts of Nebraska’s Senator George Norris. In a 1932 campaign
speech in Portland, Oregon, Franklin Roosevelt referred to his TVA and
other regional proposals as “yardsticks to prevent extortion against
the public.”
