 KPLU's Looking Back to Look Forward: The Politics of a Social Safety Net
Social Safety Nets: The stock market has plummeted. Banks have failed. The future looks bleak. I'm not talking about the current state of affairs, but about what was going on in this country in the 1930's. The Great Depression prompted the federal government to step in in ways it never had before. As we continue our election series "Looking Back to Look Forward," KPLU's Paula Wissel reviews how the government's role in providing our biggest social safety net is still an issue in presidential campaigns.
REPORTER: On March 3, 1933, people were anxious to hear how their newly elected President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, would fix the country. Even this newsreel promises that film of the ceremony is being rushed to New York by the fastest plane in the country.
UNIVERSAL NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER: The speedy plane takes off and soars over the national capitol even while President Roosevelt is still on the inaugural stand.
REPORTER: The country was desperate in ways it's hard to even imagine now. Yes, we've seen banks go under, a recession looming, but it's nothing like it was then. Because back then there wasn't any FDIC insurance to cover your savings if your bank failed, there wasn't any unemployment compensation if you lost your job. And, as for social security? It didn't exist.
Ida Gray who lives in Seattle is in her eighties. She took part in a citizens panel here at KPLU. She remembers how it was. She says her family was lucky.
IDA GRAY: My father had a job through the depression. He was one of the few. So we helped people who didn't have anything.
REPORTER: Still, she says, her father didn't make much as a mail handler on a train and food was scarce, so often, come dinnertime.
IDA GRAY: We had syrup and eggs. That was what we got.
REPORTER: The winter before Roosevelt took office, thousands of jobless men in Washington descended on the state capitol in Olympia to demand relief. Here in Seattle, some first hand accounts tell of households reduced to eating the family dog.
So it's probably not surprising that Roosevelt, a Democrat who had won the election in a landslide over Republian incumbent Herbert Hoover, was cheered wildly when he advocated extending the federal government's reach.
PRESIDENT FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT: This nation is asking for action and action now. (marching music)
REPORTER: Roosevelt's New Deal program included welfare payments for widows and single mothers, jobless benefits and, most significant in terms of its long range impact, old age pensions in the form of social security.
PRESIDENT FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT: This social security measure....(fade under)
REPORTER: The measure would be sustained through taxes on people's wages. Workers would receive benefits when they reached retirement age. There were critics. The Republican Party opposed it saying "big government" and "centralized power" were a threat to United States democracy. When Roosevelt ran for reelection, he faced Alf Landon, a businessman from Kansas. Here's Landon accepting the GOP nomination in 1935.
ALF LANDON: We Americans like straight shooters. We don't need to be duped or fooled into making sacrifices for our country.
REPORTER: The Republicans had said they weren't against helping people in need. So, in one of his campaign speeches, President Franklin Roosevelt mockingly imitated them.
PRESIDENT FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT: We believe in all these things, but we do not like the way the present administration is doing them. Just turn them over to us. We will do all of them. We will do more of them. We will do them better and most important of all the doing of them will not cost anybody anything.
REPORTER: Roosevelt won in another landslide. The country entered World War II. The economy recovered. Many of the social programs he put in place, including social security, expanded under both Republican and Democratic administrations. But over the years, opposition, which had always existed, started to build. Recognize this voice?
RONALD REAGAN: (Before he became PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN) The trouble with our liberal friends isn't that they're ignorant. It's just that they know so much that isn't so.
REPORTER: That's Ronald Reagan, long before he became President. He's speaking at the Republican convention in 1964 on behalf of presidential candidate Barry Goldwater. Goldwater lost. But the speech is considered to have launched the modern conservative political movement, sometimes called the Reagan Revolution--a movement of "no new taxes" and "cutting big government programs." In the speech, he sets his sights on social security. He talks about a young man of 21 making an average salary--his version of Joe the Plumber.
RONALD REAGAN: His social security contribution would in the open market buy him an insurance policy that would guarantee him $220 a month at age 65. The government promises $127. He could live it up until he's 31 and then take out a policy that would pay more than social security.
REPORTER: Listening to the archive recording, Brad Bigler nods in agreement.
BRAD BIGLER: If social security would have been originally put in a plan where there was a private portion of it, you're gonna have a country full of millionaires by the time they retire.
REPORTER: Bigler, who works as a sales rep for a commercial radio station in Seattle, is a supporter of John McCain. He participated in our citizens panel. Sitting nearby, Rachel Gray, an Obama supporter, tells Brad he's missing the point. The former teacher defends social security, saying it's an insurance policy.
RACHEL GRAY: Everybody pays in. Some people out live that and get to benefit more than other people, that's how it goes, right? It's a pool of money that goes to those who are alive and need it.
REPORTER: Despite Ronald Reagans's early opposition, when he became President in 1980 he did not radically restructure social security. He tweaked it some to make sure it didn't run out of money, but there was no major attempt to "privatize it" He was stymied by a Democratic Congress, but also by the fact that social security had become too popular. However, that idea of letting people set up private investment accounts didn't die. Fast forward to 2005. George W. Bush has just been re-elected and pledges to spend some of his political capital revamping social security. He takes to the road, holding town hall meetings with carefully selected participants. Here he is talking to a widow who is complaining that she can't collect both her own social security and that of her late husband.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: It's not a fair system. It's not fair to the family. It's not fair to the person who's worked all his life in this case. Had he been able to put money aside in a personal account, that account would have gone to Audrey (AUDREY: That's right). Keep goin, you're on a roll.
REPORTER: But he wasn't on a roll. The more President Bush traveled the country talking about it, the less popular the idea became of letting people set up private accounts. Even fellow Republicans began to distance themselves from the proposal. You might think that would prompt a presidential candidate to shy away from supporting anything that smacks of privatizing social security, but that's not the case. Here's Republican nominee John McCain at a town hall meeting in March.
WOMAN AT TOWN HALL MEETING: Would you advocate for some sort of program through a savings account which members of Congress currently have or personal retirement accounts?
SENATOR JOHN McCAIN: Yes, I would and I do.
REPORTER: Since the recent collapse on Wall Street, McCain has talked less about the idea. He vigorously denies Barack Obama's accusation that he wants to privatize social security. Both candidates agree on is that some fixes are needed to ensure social security's long term solvency. Democratic nominee Obama proposes having the wealthy pay more into it. Right now, he says, millionaires have only a tiny percent of their income taxed for social security.
SENATOR BARACK OBAMA: On the other hand, anybody who makes $97,000 or less pays tax on 100 percent of their income.
REPORTER: If history is any guide, it's unlikely whoever takes office will alter social security in any fundamental way. Part of its staying power may go back to a decision made by President Roosevelt back when it began in 1935. Social security, he decided, would be for all income earners, not just the poor. The universal nature of it has helped ensure social security's survival unlike New Deal welfare programs which have since been eliminated. Paula Wissel KPLU News.
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