This is the problem with "fact-checkers". The 1% and $1400 cap is a fact. And the more important fact is that FDR DID NOT GET THE SYSTEM HE WANTED. ANYTHING he said about the system WAS GONE after about 1942. When he vetoed TWO bills to raise the FICA and cap. In fact, in his INITIAL SELLING of the program -- he DID PROMISE that the rate and cap would remain close to the same.
But -- it ended up to be pay-as-you-go rather than a SECURED pool of your SEGREGATED retirement funds.
FDR might not approve of Social Security today
Would Franklin Roosevelt approve of Social Security? The question seems absurd. After all, Social Security is considered the New Deal's signature achievement. It distributes nearly $800 billion a...www.tampabay.com
When Roosevelt proposed Social Security in 1935, he envisioned a contributory pension plan. Workers' payroll taxes ("contributions") would be saved and used to pay their retirement benefits. Initially, before workers had time to pay into the system, there would be temporary subsidies. But Roosevelt rejected Social Security as a "pay-as-you-go" system that channeled the taxes of today's workers to pay today's retirees. That, he believed, would saddle future generations with huge debts — or higher taxes — as the number of retirees expanded.
Discovering that the original draft proposal wasn't a contributory pension, Roosevelt ordered it rewritten and complained to Frances Perkins, his labor secretary: "This is the same old dole under another name. It is almost dishonest to build up an accumulated deficit for the Congress ... to meet."
But Roosevelt's vision didn't prevail. In the 1940s and early 1950s, Congress gradually switched Social Security to a pay-as-you-go system. Interestingly, a coalition of liberals and conservatives pushed the change. Liberals wanted higher benefits, which — with few retirees then — existing taxes could support. Conservatives disliked the huge surpluses the government would accumulate under a contributory plan.
All this is well-told in Sylvester Schieber's The Predictable Surprise: The Unraveling of the U.S. Retirement System. Schieber probably knows more about American retirement programs than anyone. He has advised the Social Security system, consulted with private firms and written widely on the subject. His book shows how today's "entitlement" psychology dates to Social Security's muddled beginnings.
Millions of Americans believe (falsely) that their payroll taxes have been segregated to pay for their benefits and that, therefore, they "earned" these benefits. To reduce them would be to take something that is rightfully theirs. Indeed, Roosevelt — believing he had created a contributory program — said exactly that:
"We put those payroll contributions there so as to give the contributors a legal, moral and political right to collect their pensions. … No damn politician can ever scrap my Social Security program."
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FYI
My fact check was the Social Security Administration itself, not a fly by night!I
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But did you always have to pay in to it for the 10 years before you were eligible....? 9 1/2 years paying in and nothing in return?
If so, wouldn't that conflict with that author saying that Roosevelt was claiming it was a pension, in the citizens own name....?
It sounded like with the quotes posted, that he could have been talking about a separate fund for SS and NOT putting it in with the general budget??
