On my desk, as I write, lies an issue of Life magazine dated November 22, 1937. On page 30 it shows photos of a pundit, a secretary, and a newspaperman.
The pundit, Mark Sullivan, was reported to have “declared that it was the business not of the Government but of his secretary Miss Mabel Shea to provide for her old age.”
This remark prompted James L. Wright of the Buffalo Evening News to twit the President about Miss Shea. Not one to hang back, “Mr. Roosevelt retorted that Mr. Sullivan apparently would give his secretary freedom to starve after 65.”
Miss Shea, for her part, spoke up boldly: “I think the Social Security system is a good thing. I am wholly a New Dealer.”
It must have taken some courage for the prim middle-aged woman shown sitting at her typewriter to speak out against her boss’s stated position. But, early on, she recognized the value of a federal program that had begun just the year before.
Now, in the early years of the 21st century, America is being roiled by efforts to destroy the same program. The difference now is that Social Security has proven itself indispensable over the intervening 68 years.
In that time, it has protected older Americans and others against poverty, has reached out to the disabled and their families, and provided for widows and widowers. Contrary to assumptions of government programs being badly run, Social Security has operated with remarkable effectiveness and low-cost efficiency.
Yet, seeking political advantage, the current administration in Washington wants to revamp the program, depriving it of the features that make it work well. To my mind, the whole movement amounts to a scam.
The outlines of this strategy were spilled to the media by David Stockman in 1981. President Reagan’s budget director, Stockman revealed how that administration operated or, at least, wanted to operate. This approach came to be called “starving the beast.” They would increase military expenditures and cut taxes until drastic cuts became necessary in popular programs, especially human services.
A new version of this same strategy is apparently at work now. Take enough money from funds collected from payroll taxes and dedicated to Social Security, slash taxes for the rich, and soon you have a full-blown crisis that justifies drastic cutbacks in the programs that provide indispensable help to so many people.
Already, there is a crisis because of the Bush administration’s policies. The federal government is in deep debt, thanks in large part to tax cuts for the wealthy and war expenses. But that crisis cannot be laid at the door of Social Security.
This system is solvent now and will remain so for at least another long generation. It may possibly stay balanced for the foreseeable future, depending on a variety of factors such as the vigor of the economy and immigration rates.
What I most object to in the “reform” proposals is that they shove a wedge between generations. To allay fears of those past middle age, the White House would exempt us from change in benefits.
But, seizing on the well-known skepticism of the younger generations about the future solvency of Social Security, they promise to privatize the system so that people now young can manage their own private accounts.
As if we all learned zip from the experience of the boom and bust in the 1990s, they propose letting people fend for themselves. And, as so often, they have come up with a propagandistic slogan, “The Ownership Society,’ intended to make the young believe that they no longer need to plan their future lives depending on government hand-outs.
As I never tire of repeating, we are all in this together. What lies at stake for some, lies at stake for all of us. We elders cannot allow ourselves to be bought off by promises that we will keep ours. “I’m all right, Jack” is not a suitable principle for a sound gerontology.
To its credit, AARP is standing up against the scam this time. After letting us down egregiously last year when it supported another political scam, the Medicare prescription drug legislation, the organization seems to be trying to make amends.
This change of heart must be having an impact. At least, the right-wing comic strip Mallard Fillmore, in a recent single panel, showed a child in bed screaming: “Mommy! There’s an AARP ad under my bed.” Another voice threatens: “Big bad Social Security reform is gonna eat you up!”
“Reform” of the sort proposed could eat everybody up, at least to the extent of shattering our community of interests and placing at unwise risk the financial security of future generations.
Mabel Shea got it right, back in 1937, when she rejected her boss’s opinion and forthrightly stated her own. And so did FDR. The Social Security system has proven, over and over, that it is indeed a good thing.
Richard Griffin