In
1933 Francis Townsend proposed a scheme
whereby the Federal government would provide every person over 60
a $200 monthly pension. Townsend claimed that his Old Age Revolving
Pension Plan could be financed by a Federal tax on commercial transactions.
The plan obtained a great deal of public support and by 1935 his Townsend
Club had over 5 million members.
In
1935 Townsend handed in to President Franklin
D. Roosevelt a petition supporting the Old Age Revolving Pension
Plan that had been signed by over 20 million people. In response to
the petition, Congress passed the
Social Security Act.
It
established Old Age and Survivors' Insurance that provided for compulsory
savings for wage earners so that benefits may be paid to them on retirement
at 65. To finance the scheme, both the employer and employee had to
pay a 3% payroll tax. The provisions of the act also encouraged states
to deal with social problems. It did this by offering substantial
financial help the states provide unemployment benefits, old-age pensions,
aid to the disabled, maternity care, public health work and vocational
rehabilitation.
Francis
Townsend claimed that Roosevelt's social security legislation
was completely inadequate and in 1936 joined with Father Edward
Coughlin and Gerald L. K. Smith
to form the National Union of Social
Justice. William
Lepke was selected as the party's candidate in the 1936 presidential
election but won only 882,479 votes compared to Franklin
D. Roosevelt (27,751,597) and Alfred Landon
(16,679,583).
Social Security Board Poster
(1)
Franklin
D. Roosevelt, radio broadcast, Fireside Chat (28th April, 1935)
While our present and projected expenditures for work relief are wholly
within the reasonable limits of our national credit resources, it
is obvious that we cannot continue to create governmental deficits
for that purpose year after year. We must begin now to make provision
for the future. That is why our social security program is an important
part of the complete picture. It proposes, by means of old age pensions,
to help those who have reached the age of retirement to give up their
jobs and thus give to the younger generation greater opportunities
for work and to give to all a feeling of security as they look toward
old age.
The unemployment insurance
part of the legislation will not only help to guard the individual
in future periods of lay-off against dependence upon relief, but it
will, by sustaining purchasing power, cushion the shock of economic
distress. Another helpful feature of unemployment insurance is the
incentive it will give to employers to plan more carefully in order
that unemployment may be prevented by the stabilizing of employment
itself.
(2)
John
T. Flynn,
The Roosevelt Myth (1944)
The most tragic illusion
about this man is that built up by the ceaseless repetition of the
false statement that he gave us a system of security.
Security for whom? For
the aged? An oldage security bill was passed during his first
administration which provides for workers who reach the age of 65
a pension of $8 a week at most. And even this meager and still very
badly constructed plan had to be pushed through against a strange
inertness on his part. Roosevelt's mind ran in curious circles. People
have forgotten his procrastination about putting through the social
security bill until in the 1934 congressional elections the Republicans
denounced him for his tardiness. It is difficult to believe this now
after all the propaganda that has washed over people's minds. And
when he did finally consent to a bill, like so many good ideas that
went into his mind, it came out badly twisted. It contained a plan
for building a huge reserve fund that would have amounted to nothing
more than a scheme to extract billions from the workers' payrolls
without any adequate return. Over the protest of the President, the
Congress finally took that incredible joker out of the law. But it
is in every respect a pathetically inadequate law. Does anyone imagine
that $8 a week is security for anyone, particularly since Roosevelt's
inflation has cut the value of that in half?
But what of the millions
of people who through long years of thrift and saving have been providing
their own security? What of the millions who have been scratching
for years to pay for their life insurance and annuities, putting money
in savings banks, commercial banks, buying government and corporation
bonds to protect themselves in their old age? What of the millions
of teachers, police, firemen, civil employees of states and cities
and the government, of the armed services and the army of men and
women entitled to retirement funds from private corporations
railroads, industrial and commercial? These thrifty people have seen
onehalf of their retirement benefits wiped out by the Roosevelt
inflation that has cut the purchasing power of the dollar in two.
Roosevelt struck the most terrible blow at the security of the masses
of the people while posing as the generous donor of "security
for all." During the war boom and in the postwar boom created
by spending 40 billion dollars a year the illusion of security is
sustained. The full measure of Roosevelt's hopeless misunderstanding
of this subject will come when security will be most needed
and most absent.
Available from Amazon Books
(order below)
