I Love Social Security [View all]

[sabrina 1]

There are literally millions of reasons to love this program but I'll start with this one:

I am a Democrat. The SS Program makes me proud to be a Democrat. FDR called it 'the cornerstone of my administration'. And it has become the cornerstone, the crown jewel of the Democratic Party.

I tried to think of any piece of Republican Legislation over the past 60 years that could compare to the brilliance, morality, ethics and incredible success of this program and I can't think of one.

This Democratic program has helped to drastically lower the poverty rate of seniors.

Texas Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson says Social Security slashed poverty among the elderly

"In 1935, more than 50% of the elderly population lived in poverty. Today that poverty rate stands officially at 9.4%."

The linked article is a fact check piece. It concludes that the poverty rate among elders in 1935 may have been way higher than the Congresswoman stated. However, as they said, her point stands.

Whenever I am talking to a Republican who is ranting about Democrats and 'Commies' and 'Socialists' I always ask them if they or anyone they know has ever benefited from Social Security. It is amazing how most of them too love SS. Equally amazing is how few of them know that it was a Democratic President who initiated it. I get such a thrill out of telling them that. .

Some of them deny it and call me a liar! Lol, well, you know how they are!

But even after being shocked to find out that they are benefiting from a Socialist Democratic Program, most of them reluctantly admit that at least 'Democrats did something worthwhile decades ago'.

Here is another reason I love it:



Francis Perkins, the woman behind Social Security. She was a witness to the Shirtwaist Fire and was so affected by it that she worked tirelessly for the rest of her life to establish workers' rights and to provide for the working class in their older years.

Social Security Pioneers

She had powers of persuasion obviously, not ever compromising her ideals even with those who were difficult to convince, as this excerpt shows:

Prior to going to Washington, Perkins held positions in State government in New York, first as an aid to governor Al Smith and then to Franklin Roosevelt when he became governor. Smith, a machine politician from the old school, was an early social reformer with whom Frances Perkins made many a common-cause. At Smith's funeral in 1944 two of his former Tammany Hall political cronies were overheard to speculate on why Smith had become a social crusader. One of them summed the matter up this way: "I'll tell you. Al Smith read a book. That book was a person, and her name was Frances Perkins. She told him all these things and he believed her."

She stated that:

"I came to Washington to work for God, FDR, and the millions of forgotten, plain common workingmen."

Who could not be proud to be a member of the same party as this brilliant, compassionate, . ethical, moral woman? She is the epitome of what I always think of when I think of a Democratic Woman.



The closest woman to her today imo is Elizabeth Warren.

And FDR, he had the foresight and courage to appoint a woman as Secretary of Labor. He so respected her opinions, he didn't go to Wall St Bankers for advice on the matter of how to help the working class, he listened to this truly Progressive woman and fought to implement her ideas into legislation.

Republicans always claim that privatizing SS would make it a more 'independent program' lying of course, that SS is some kind of 'welfare' program or misusing deliberately the word 'entitlement to create the image of people who have a 'sense of entitlement' about something they did not earn.

However, because FDR thought this through, another thing I love about SS is that he went to great lengths to prevent the program from taking away any dignity from its beneficiaries by using Insurance policies as a model for it.

Life Before Social Security; 'A Great Calamity Has Come Upon Us'

Roosevelt insisted that the new program not look like a dole, his aides later explained; rather, it should resemble a private insurance plan, tied to an individual's contributions in their working years. ''You want to make it simple, very simple,'' Roosevelt told his aides, Perkins later wrote in a memoir. ''Just simple and natural nothing elaborate or alarming about it.''

The Chained CPI would allow Republicans to refer to SS Beneficiaries as 'welfare/dole cases. A shame to undo the work done by FDR to make sure SS was never viewed that way.

But the right was busy back then also as Frances Perkins illustrates in this amusing anecdote:

Perkins wrote that when she went before Congress to present the plan, Senator Thomas Pryor Gore of Oklahoma had a pointed question.

'''Isn't this socialism?' he asked me. My reply was, 'Oh, no.' Then, smiling, leaning forward and talking to me as though I were a child, he said, 'Isn't this a teeny-weeny bit of socialism?'''

David M. Kennedy, the Stanford historian and author of ''Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War,'' said that he found it paradoxical that the current debate over Social Security ''is being couched in terms of individual ownership and privatization of the system, when those kinds of ideas deeply informed the way the original Social Security system was put together.''

SS has expanded since then to the disabled and to dependent children.

I love Social Security because it demonstrates what De Togueville said about the American people. He noted that the American people had a generosity of spirit that allowed them to want to help each other. I believe that most Americans do want a society where we take care of those most in need. That they are generous, compassionate and kind for the most part.

Roosevelt sent his Social Security plan, which included unemployment insurance, to Congress in January 1935, and by August he was able to sign it into law. Some New Dealers chafed at its limits, but the law was widely seen as a moderate alternative to the more radical proposals -- like a guaranteed minimum income for the elderly -- that were stirring then from the grassroots.

''We can never insure 100 percent of the population against 100 percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life,'' Roosevelt declared. ''But we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age.''

I think part of the reason Social Security is still one of the most popular programs is because the American people really are the generous, compassionate people described by De Toqueville. That in general, they do want a society that takes care of its own.

I also think they understand the need for a permanent safety net. They may not remember the Great Depression out of which SS was born, but we have read about it.



I don't love politicians. I don't think you can love someone you don't know. I do want them to understand that the majority of Americans love and support the few safety nets we have in this country. I would love it if they represented a majority of the American people rather than the minority that will always be there trying to take away those safety nets.

I don't understand why they don't listen to the people.

Hands OFF Social Security!