Originally published June 29 2005
Social Security at a crossroads
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
This article in The Republican gives a history of the social security issue and Bush's present plan to pre-empt a looming deficit.
When President Franklin D. Roosevelt crafted Social Security in 1935, America was an immigrant nation, impoverished but determined.
Shirley Temple tap-danced across the silver screen, while children not much older than her worked in factories and on farms for $2.50 a week.
A loaf of bread cost 7 cents, but there were long bread lines in America.
In Springfield and Holyoke, three-bedroom apartments rented for $4 to $5 weekly, but homelessness plagued the nation.
A dime could buy three Mr. Goodbars or a weekday ticket to the movies, which cost 20 cents on weekends.
At that time, in the midst of the Great Depression, Roosevelt made a new compact with the people, a promise carrying the weight and authority of the government.
He proposed Social Security (Old Age and Survivors Insurance) in January of that year.
Today, Social Security stands as the most enduring and popular domestic program of the last century.
At issue is not just how to keep the program solvent and best guarantee adequate retirement income for the aged, but also the even more fundamental question of the appropriate role of government.
"At the very core of this debate is simply that this is the largest legacy that F.D.R., who was clearly the most popular Democratic president, left to the country," said U.S. Rep. John W. Olver, D-Amherst.
"George Bush is going after this to destroy that legacy."
But President George W. Bush says the system will self-destruct if left unattended.
In exchange for receiving less Social Security benefits, he wants Americans to be able to invest up to 4 percent of their 6.2 percent payroll deduction into a personal account that can be invested in the stock market.
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