Posted on 01/30/2005 10:12:08 PM PST by RWR8189
IN HIS inaugural address, President George W. Bush invoked the name of my grandfather, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, as part of his campaign to privatize Social Security. Similarly, a political organization supporting that drastic change recently ran a television commercial using a newsreel clip showing President Roosevelt signing the Social Security Act into law. The implication that FDR would support privatization of America's greatest national program is an attempt to deceive the American people and an outrage.
President Roosevelt founded Social Security for very basic but important reasons. He believed that the only enemy that could ever defeat the United States was fear itself. He and my grandmother, Eleanor, looked at America and found fear of want -- particularly after retirement or loss of a parent. Today, thanks in large part to Social Security, the number of older Americans below the poverty line has dropped from almost 50 percent to only 8 percent.
FDR believed that Social Security should be simple, guaranteed, fair, earned, and available to all Americans. President Roosevelt was adamant that Social Security was an insurance program to provide basic needs in retirement.
As a former Wall Street lawyer, my grandfather fully supported the opportunity of every American to have fair investment opportunities. But Social Security was -- and is -- something different. It was -- and is -- the guaranteed basis of a secure retirement. The risk is that future retired Americans will lose that assurance if the guaranteed benefit is eliminated. Drastic changes that divert the payroll tax to privatization will almost certainly eliminate that guaranteed benefit by crippling the ability to pay benefits, imposing trillions of dollars of new costs on the government and creating massive federal debt. Privatization threatens to bring about the collapse of the entire Social Security system.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
I think I remember this guy giving an anti Bush scree during the election so anything he writes is certain to be framed in that light - i.e., Biased and full of inaccuracies.
FDR's legacy; father of the nanny state and 45 years of cold war thanks to his stupidity in giving half of Europe to Stalin at the Yalta conference. FDR, Peanut Boy and the sink-emperor; three of the greatest idiots in American history!!
Boston Glob (cheerleaders for the homosexual marriage cause) now pushes an anti-SS reform.
This is not about SS this is only about opposition for the sake of opposition.
I think we learned from Ron Reagan that the offspring of great American leaders can possess the IQ of a brick.
FDR lived in another time and in a different world. What was good in the late 1930's isn't necessarily going to work in the 2030's when I'll be retired.
Commie ;)
My grandfather started SS, OK, but then he put it in the general fund and RAPED IT!!!!!!!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6364551/site/newsweek/
This guy is just like Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, running out at each new news event to say "No, of course this isn't as big as Watergate, the story WE worked on."
If FDR really cared about the seniors, why was the retirement age, at SS inception, set at several years later than the, then current life expetancy?
Why, if one happens to pre-decease one's "eligiblility" does that person's estate lose any claim to the "investment?"
Why is the SS administration required by law, to "invest" its residual unspent monies in US debt instruments, guaranteed to tax the grandchildren of the retirees?
Hey! James Roosevelt! What was your grandpa's exit strategy in WWII?
The fact it's in the Boston Globe was a good clue.
Also .. according to some reports I've heard - in the original documents - there was a provision for private accounts - but it was not included in the final legislation. So it was considered .. but I can understand why - the dems .. even then .. wanted to have a population eternally grateful to the dems. It's pretty amazing when you think of it.
Let's have compassionate conservatives rally for people who are dying, to be able to take ALL of the money THEY have put into it, plus ALL of THEIR EMPLOYER'S contribution as soon as they want it.
Let's have compassionate conservatives rally for the spouses whose loved one died unexpectedly to recover ALL of the money that THEIR SPOUSE had put into it, plus ALL of THEIR EMPOYER'S contribution as soon as they want it.
That will sink this Titanic fraud.
I think FDR would come back and smack his grandson for opening his mouth. FDR would be aghast at the state of the program, and he'd fully support some kind of reform. His legacy was intended to help people, not to give the government a cash cow to raid any time they needed money. With the stock market, and the possibility of private accounts furthering the ability of the government to help people by increasing savings and investment... I think FDR would be happy to see some kind of partial privatization of the system.
Those times in the 30s were very socialistic. The US was more like Europe than the US as we now know it.
You do have a way with words......I am curious as to what your tag for John Kerry would be.....
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