Peter Dreier and Donald Cohen: Ignore the Fear-Mongering on Social Security
[Peter Dreier teaches politics and chairs the Urban & Environmental Policy program at Occidental College. Donald Cohen is the co-founder and president of the Center on Policy Initiatives, a San Diego-based think tank.]
Alf Landon, the Kansas governor running as the Republican Party's 1936 presidential candidate, called it a "fraud on the working man." Silas Strawn, a former president of both the American Bar Assn. and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said it was part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's attempt to "Sovietize the country." The American Medical Assn. denounced it as a "compulsory socialistic tax."
What was this threat to American prosperity, freedom and democracy they were all decrying? It was Social Security, which Roosevelt signed into law on Aug. 14, 1935 — 75 years ago Saturday.
The opponents of Social Security were not right-wing extremists (the counterparts of today's "tea party") but the business establishment and the Republican Party mainstream....
Read entire article at LA Times
Alf Landon, the Kansas governor running as the Republican Party's 1936 presidential candidate, called it a "fraud on the working man." Silas Strawn, a former president of both the American Bar Assn. and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said it was part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's attempt to "Sovietize the country." The American Medical Assn. denounced it as a "compulsory socialistic tax."
What was this threat to American prosperity, freedom and democracy they were all decrying? It was Social Security, which Roosevelt signed into law on Aug. 14, 1935 — 75 years ago Saturday.
The opponents of Social Security were not right-wing extremists (the counterparts of today's "tea party") but the business establishment and the Republican Party mainstream....