Long dead, long sainted FDR abused by TehWun?? How can this be? What is wrong with America's first Half-Black Half Back Barrack?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9752880Obama gets Social Security facts wrong
Donnachaidh (1000+ posts) Sat Dec-11-10 12:39 PM
Original message
Obama gets Social Security facts wrong
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/12/11/927904/-Ob...
Here's a book that needs to be on President Obama's immediate reading list: Nancy Altman's excellent The Battle for Social Security: From FDR's Vision To Bush's Gamble. In it, Altman dispels the kind of Zombie Social Security lies that have been showing up in President Obama's talking points. Dan Froomkin has the details on how he got its history wrong.
At the press conference (see the transcript), Obama defended his controversial decision to give in to Republican demands for a massive tax cut for the rich on the grounds that "in order to get stuff done, we're going to compromise."
His prime example: "This is why FDR, when he started Social Security, it only affected widows and orphans. You did not qualify. And yet now it is something that really helps a lot of people."
....
Obama's overall point -- that Social Security wasn't born fully grown -- was exactly right. But his facts were exactly wrong. The Social Security Act, as first signed into law by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1935, paid retirement benefits to the primary worker -- and not to their widows and orphans. It wasn't until a 1939 change that the law added benefits for survivors and for the retiree's spouse and children.
The system was set up specifically not as welfare for the neediest, aid to widows and children. It was set up as an insurance program for every American worker, into which every American worker paid, and done so for very smart political and policy reasons. Here's how Altman describes that history:
More at the link ---
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President Present pooches the facts? Awe no'es says it ain't so.
Name removed (0 posts) Sat Dec-11-10 12:40 PM
Response to Original message
1. Deleted message
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Just don't say it too loud.
Larkspur (1000+ posts) Sat Dec-11-10 12:52 PM
Response to Original message
2. At best Obama is a Reagan Democrat That's why he gets his FDR facts wrong.
Blame IKE!!
pinto (1000+ posts) Sat Dec-11-10 01:09 PM
Response to Original message
10. Steve Benen (Washington Monthly) makes this point on the bigger picture of Social Security.
Edited on Sat Dec-11-10 01:17 PM by pinto
SOCIAL SECURITY'S HUMBLE ORIGINS
Steve Benen
December 10, 2010
I'm loath to disagree with Krugman, and it's clear that the president's assessment was at best incomplete, but my read on social insurance history is slightly different.
On Medicare, Krugman's right, it was pretty ambitious at its start. It all but ignored people with disabilities, it didn't cover prescription drugs, and made no allowances for home health services, but in general, Medicare started quite strong.
Social Security, however, is another story -
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20...
No self-respecting liberal today would support Franklin Roosevelt's original Social Security Act. It excluded agricultural workers -- a huge part of the economy in 1935, and one in which Latinos have traditionally worked. It excluded domestic workers, which included countless African Americans and immigrants. It did not cover the self-employed, or state and local government employees, or railroad employees, or federal employees or employees of nonprofits. It didn't even cover the clergy. FDR's Social Security Act did not have benefits for dependents or survivors. It did not have a cost-of-living increase. If you became disabled and couldn't work, you got nothing from Social Security.
John Judis noted earlier this year that the original Social Security Act "was a bare shell of what it became in the 1950s after amendment. Benefits were nugatory. And most important, coverage was denied to wide swaths of the workforce."
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/20...
HennaBell quotes wikipedia.
Hannah Bell (1000+ posts) Sat Dec-11-10 01:44 PM
Response to Reply #10
16. the original social security act provided:
snip
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_ (United_States)
Great teaching tool HennaBell.
