To: bentway who wrote (6108 ) 1/13/2017 11:33:30 PM From: i-node Read Replies (3) | Respond to Chris, when you say that was never the plan, you are dead wrong. FDR was adamant that these payments be funded solely by contribution revenue and earnings. His original proposition, which I cannot find, specifically used the term "account" in regard to the worker's stake. Roosevelt’s conception of Social Security required, then, an economic counterpart to the private individual insurance premium. This was to be the payroll tax, a deduction from the wage. Roosevelt held to this conceit well before he was elected and he reiterated the same commitment years after the Social Security Act was passed. As early as 1930 he declared that any benefits accorded to workers through legislation should “be a result of their own efforts and foresightedness” so that they would “be receiving not charity, but the natural profits (sic) of their years of labor and insurance.” In 1934 he instructed Congress that the program’s funds “should be raised by contribution rather than by general taxation.” In his first meeting with the drafters of the legislation he reiterated that old age insurance “must be self-supporting, without subsidies from general tax sources.” Shortly thereafter he told an assemblage of experts on social insurance programs that Social Security “must not be allowed to become a dole through the mingling of insurance and relief….[and] must be financed by contributions, not taxes.” In response to strong objections from Rexford Tugwell, one of his most articulate underconsumptionist advisors, the president emphasized that he was “inclined toward a wholly contributory scheme with the government not participating.” Two years after SSA was passed Roosevelt reiterated his basic conception of social insurance, and its grounds: “[A]s regards social insurance of all kinds, if I have anything to say about it, it will always be contributed, both on the part of the employer and the employee, on a sound actuarial basis. It means no money out of the Treasury
