Posted on 02/07/2005 6:42:12 PM PST by wagglebee
Democrats appealing to President Franklin Roosevelt in their opposition to President Bush's proposal to offer private Social Security accounts may have to turn elsewhere for inspiration.
In a Jan. 17, 1935, address to Congress, Roosevelt, the originator of the federal retirement system, looked into the future and saw the need to move beyond the pay-as-you go financing and eventually establish "self-supporting annuity plans," noted Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund.
"For perhaps 30 years to come, funds will have to be provided by the states and the federal government to meet these pensions," Roosevelt told Congress.
But after that, he said, it would be necessary to move to "voluntary contributory annuities by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age."
Roosevelt proposed that "the federal government assume one-half of the cost of the old-age pension plan, which ought ultimately to be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans."
Fund quoted a top Republican member of the Ways and Means Committee.
"What Roosevelt was talking about is the need to update Social Security sometime around 1965 with what today we would call personal accounts," he said. "By my reckoning, we are only about 40 years late in addressing his concerns on how [to] make Social Security solvent."
In his recent State of the Union address, President Bush argued that without reform, Social Security will go into the red by 2018 and be bankrupt by 2042.
"With each passing year, fewer workers are paying ever-higher benefits to an ever-larger number of retirees," he said.
The president has proposed that younger workers be allowed to invest a small portion of their income in tightly restricted personal retirement accounts. In the first year the maximum investment would be limited to $1,000 a year, with an increase of $100 each year thereafter.
But last week, Democrats sought to dramatize their fight against President Bush by holding a news conference at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial.
Noting that he represents Las Vegas, Democratic Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada has called Bush's proposal a "dangerous" plan akin to gambling.
If FDR were alive today, he, like Zell Miller, would be disgusted by the conduct of today's Democrats...........Especially the way they have taken over the jobs of Axis Sally and Tokyo Rose of undermining the U.S. war effort by any propaganda means they can.
There's one you won't see in the MSM. It would upset the AARP.
Waiting for this DIM bubble bursting information to make the rounds to the American public via Fox and other news sources...
And JFK would probably kick the crap out of his drunken brother!
But after that, he said, it would be necessary to move to "voluntary contributory annuities by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age."
And the dictatorship of the proletariat will wither away....
Except the American commies don't seem any fonder of this concept than their Soviet comrades did.
Aged Activists Reaping Profits
this is too perfect. i never would have attributed such restraint to him (and I'm still skeptical).
Even FDR realized that it was a Ponzi scheme destined to fail yet the 'Rats today cannot. But this is about fighting ANYTHING that would tend to help Bush, even if it is bad for America.
The man who tried to pack the court? I'm not sure I agree with you.
Actually, this makes sense.
While Roosevelt introduced the concept of entitlements to America, the simple fact of the matter is that Roosevelt probably gave us the bare minimum we could have gotten away with during the Depression. He was squeezed into where he was by the more radicals, such as Father Coughlin and Huey Long, who would have been much more redistributory. Things really could have been a lot worse.
This gives more credence to my suspicion that Roosevelt was as moderate as he could be at the time. Part of the rationale for social security during the Depression was to get the old guys out of the workforce and replace them with younger workers.
I'll be damned!
I would like to see a transcript of this speech - for all the debate about accounts as long as it's been happening and only NOW is something like this being quoted? It's almost 'convenient'.
Here ya go.........4th paragragh from the bottom.......
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/presidents/32_f_roosevelt/psources/ps_socsecspeech.html
http://www.ssa.gov/history/fdrstmts.htmlAnd, if you're interested, FDR's 1935 State of the Union Address can be found here:
http://www.albany.edu/faculty/gz580/his101/su35fdr.html
No one but me has ever mentioned on FR, what would have happened if there had been no COLA? It was put in by Johnson, and most likely a demo congress. There was so much money in the fund at that time [on paper] they had to start spending it. Also it was an increase twice a year and it went through the Carter years that way, remember it was tied to the inflation rate, and just remember what in flation was under Carter.
My step father died in 1953 , was 77, had collected SS for 4 or 5 years, and recieved the same amount every month $17.00.
Frannie
bump
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