Personality and Views
Borah was a progressive Republican who often had strong differences of opinion with the conservative wing of the party. Borah also had a reputation for being headstrong and independent. When conservative President Calvin Coolidge was told of Borah's fondness for horseback riding, the president is said to have replied, "It's hard to imagine Senator Borah going in the same direction as his horse."
Conservative Republicans in Idaho, notably Governor and later Senator Frank R. Gooding, often feuded with Borah as well. Nevertheless, Borah became a strong political force in Idaho and elsewhere often in spite of opposition from his own party.
Wallace E. Olson, then president of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants in mocking the United States income tax system and rates reported on the debates held in Congress that,
A fear expressed by a number of opponents was that the proposed law, with its low rates was the camel's nose under the tent that once a tax on incomes was enacted, rates would tend to rise. Sen. William E. Borah of Idaho was outraged by such anxieties, and derided a suggestion that the rate might eventually climb as high as 20 percent. Who, he asked, could impose such socialistic, confiscatory rates? Only Congress. And how could Congress, the Representatives of the American People, be so lacking in fairness, justice and patriotism? -- Wall Street Journal, October 5, 1973. Page 8 at columns 4-6.
In 1931 Borah declared he was in favor of the revision of the Versailles Treaty and the Polish corridor, and the revision of the Treaty of Trianon that divided lands from the old Hungarian Kingdom between Austria, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia.
In 1932 Borah strongly disagreed with the suggestion of the drafters of the London Economic Conference of 1933, who met in Geneva, that the United States should settle intergovernmental debts as a step to recover from the Great Depression.
Borah became the dean of the U.S. Senate in 1933.
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