Chipping away at a pillar
The author explains the history of Social Security and why opponents have failed to eliminate it.
The author explains the history of Social Security and why opponents have failed to eliminate it.
By Robert G. Kaiser
January 22, 2006
THE BATTLE FOR SOCIAL SECURITY: From FDR's Vision to Bush's Gamble.Nancy J. Altman. Wiley. 362 pages. $24.95.
It's Nancy J. Altman's bad luck that President Bush abandoned his effort to end Social Security as we have known it before her fine history of America's most important government program could reach bookstores. Her book would have enriched the old debate because it provides historical context, a quaint intellectual notion often evaded in Washington arguments.
The context provided by Altman, who chairs the Pension Rights Center's board, may offer the best single explanation for Bush's humiliating failure to ''reform'' Social Security or even build significant support for his ideas. The program has become a pillar of American life that supports millions, one that we take for granted, like death and taxes.
What began as a radical departure in social policy -- and Altman tells this story wonderfully -- is now one of the most reliable institutions of a conservative society. The first Republican to try to create a popular mandate for undoing Social Security was Alf Landon, the GOP's presidential candidate in 1936. Challenging President Franklin D. Roosevelt that year, Landon and the Republicans campaigned against the new Social Security Act (passed in 1935) as an attack on American freedom. They denounced the 1 percent payroll tax scheduled to go into effect at the beginning of 1937 as government larceny of earned wages. Many employers put just that message, in writing, into the pay envelopes of their workers on the eve of the 1936 election. Landon was trounced anyway.
New medical programs for the elderly (Medicare) and the poor (Medicaid) were added, finally overcoming opposition from the American Medical Association. In 1971, Rep. Wilbur D. Mills (D-Ark.) proposed historic changes that made cost-of-living adjustments in benefits automatic and raised the basic benefit for retirees by 20 percent. President Richard Nixon obligingly signed these changes into law. Suddenly, millions of Americans had a guaranteed retirement benefit big enough on which to survive.
Only Ronald Reagan showed any inclination to alter Social Security, and he quickly changed his mind and instead oversaw modest, practical changes. A similarly modest package of changes now would take care of the problem for another half century or longer, Altman argues.
Altman is no David McCullough; her prose is clean and workmanlike, not literary. Her story gets confused in some places, bogged down with detail in others. Still, the book moves briskly along the interesting story line, and it will still be relevant the next time Social Security's critics revive the effort to undo our only national insurance program. The history of Social Security confirms one of the iron laws of Washington: In this town, no important policy dispute is ever definitively settled.
Robert G. Kaiser reviewed this book for The Washington Post.
